^ back to top ^Grafenwoehr in 1973-74
Tank Ranges 12 & 80
If you have good speakers turn the volume way up.
Note: The webmaster was in the 24th Engineer Group attached to the 79th as a Soil Analyst during this period. By the middle of 1973 he was transfered to the 79th. The webmaster was flown from K-Town (Kaiserslautern) to the Zoo (Gerszewski Barracks) in Karlsruhe in a small helicopter, then he boarded a Chinook with a platoon from Co C 79th, and a barf bucket, and was flown to Graf.
About Tank Ranges 12 & 80
C Company's project at Tank Ranges 12 and 80 was a whopper in its own right. They had significant support from HHC in the form of surveying control and soils lab work. The folks from A Company operated a quarry near the range, providing gravel for C Company's new tank trails. C Company occupied both their vertical construction platoons, and all the earthmoving assets in the battalion. A pretty big job for a group of young fellows, and they did it safely, taking care of each other. (But they built the Range Tower backwards - Webmaster) Tragically, we lost a B Company earthmoving soldier who drowned swimming in an old quarry near Graf after an especially hot day on the range. - LT John McConaghy, Co. B, 1st Platoon
Jim Earle's 19 Most Memorable Moments
 AWOL from Graf, 1973
 Italian hitch hiker we picked up in Milano. She stayed with us for 3-days. The answer to your question is no way. It's a great story though. Here's a small taste of the story.
The Maintenance Complex
Note: After Kogut and Earle went back to the world the 79th only had one surveyor left. But the Maintenance Complex was way over his head. So the webmaster was given the responsibility of both Soil & Survey until SSG Pelfrey finally arrived near the end of 1973 to head up the new survey team. When the time came to draw the As-Built plans the 79th did not have enough draftsmen either, so the webmaster drew the As-Built plans for the project too.
About The Maintenance Complex
The Maintenance Complex was the biggest project B Company had taken on in a long time. Planning started in the winter of 1972-1973 with LT Kenneth Clow as the Project Officer. By the time B Company moved to Graf in the spring of 1973, CPT William Gay (Read Biography) had assumed command of the company, and LT Sidney Allison took over as the Project Officer. LT Allison was promoted to CPT and reassigned, and in the fall of 1973, LT Lee Davis took over as Project Officer and finished the job.
Just about nobody from B Company (or the rest of the 79th, for that matter) was left in Karlsruhe. Both B Company vertical construction platoons were involved at the Maintenance Complex site, and the earthmoving platoon was working with C Company on the upgrade of Tank Ranges 12 and 80. The early work on the Maintenance Complex involved getting the building foundations and structure in place, and a whole pile of grading and paving. The paving equipment came from the 24th Engineer Group's Equipment Platoon, and labor was provided by the 79th. Concrete paving went on dusk-to-dawn for months. There were also hundreds of yards of concrete-paved drainage ditches, sludge traps, and oil separators that had to go in, as well.
I'll leave it to the Webmaster to tell the story of how the Maintenance Complex project turned out, since he was there. In response to the observation that the NCOs were not very visible on the jobsite, I can only recall that there were not many there in the first place. In the post-Vietnam draw-down, the Army was having a hard time convincing career soldiers that they should stay in, especially after twenty years. Europe came lower in priority than Asian assignments, or apparently than stateside duty for that matter. B Company had First Sergeant Givens, a number of earthmoving NCOs, and several experienced vertical construction leaders like 1st Platoon's SFC Crawford out on the line. They were good NCOs, but they were spread plenty thin. In general, things got done because some special young fellows like Mike Bridge and Gary Burdett got picked to be acting NCOs. They took the challenge, and stepped up and got more done with fewer resources than anyone could reasonably have expected of them. - LT John McConaghy, Co. B, 1st Platoon
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