568th Engineer Company Supports the 54th Engineer Battalion in Germany

568th LE Company supports the 54th Combat Engineer Battalion in Wildflecken Germany

by CPT Kent Whitman USA, Retired

Edited by LtCol Geoff Corson USMC Retired

In the summer of 1969, I left the 54th Combat Engineer Battalion to take command of the 568th Light Equipment Engineer Company stationed at Pioneer Kaserne in Hanau West Germany. My previous assignment was in the 54th Combat Engineer Battalion (previous chapter) stationed in Wildflecken Germany as a Platoon Leader. In Wildflecken I was promoted to 1LT. Shortly after joining the 568th in Hanau I was promoted to CPT. During that summer, the 568th was supporting the 54th doing Combat Engineer project work in the field on the Wildflecken base. Also stationed at Wildflecken was the 2/15th Infantry Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division.

At the time of my visit to Wildflecken to visit my men in the field to see their project work, the 2/15th Infantry Battalion was conducting air mobile operations using CH 37 helicopters which had big engines on the sides of the helicopter.

Figure 1 CH 37 Mojave Sikorsky Helicopter

Figure 2 Clipped from The Pittsburgh Press, 19 Jun 1969

When I finished my ground visit with my troops by jeep, I returned to the Wildflecken airfield to get my helicopter, a CH 34, ride back to Hanau. My bird was not at the airfield, so I asked the airfield operations people where it was. They told me it was on a recovery operation because one of the air mobile birds had crashed with about 12 troops on board. I later learned that one was killed and 11 were injured, some with severe injuries. The CH 37 had lost cyclic control at about 100 feet and came down on its side with one of the engines setting on top of the wreckage. It was in a field not far from the Wildflecken airfield.

When my CH 34 returned to the airfield with some of the badly mangled injured, we unloaded them placing them in ambulances. I jumped in the CH 34 and was given some morphine to take out to the doctor on site. When I arrived, there were 2 soldiers still left crushed under the wreckage. I was told they had a 5-ton wrecker in route to lift the helicopter so the remaining two could be extricated from under the wreckage. I told them the 5-ton wrecker would not do the lift since the helicopter weighed about 21,000 pounds. I suggested they request a 20-ton rough terrain crane from the 54th. They did make that request and it was soon dispatched.

While waiting for the 20-ton crane I asked the Infantry unit members that had gathered on site to get me all the salt packs out of their C-Rations. When the crane arrived, I instructed the Engineer Maintenance Warrant who came with the wrecker to rig the helicopter for lifting, which he did. Then I told him to stand in the cab of the crane with the operator and not to let the operator set the break on the cranes lift mechanism. If he set the break the crane would settle a few inches and we could not afford that to happen while the doctor and I were under it. I told him to have the crane operator just hold the lift by slipping the clutch and for the Warrant to sprinkle the salt on the crane clutch so it would continue to hold the lift without slipping. The doctor and I crawled under the helicopter to pull the 2 remaining soldiers free while the Warrant and crane operator lifted it up just enough so we could get under it and pull them out.

All this time my pregnant wife back in Hanau had heard the news of a helicopter crash and did not know if it was my helicopter or not. She was in a panic to hear if it was my bird. I had the flight operations folks at Wildflecken call Hanau and tell them I was all right and in route back to Hanau.

The 568th Company also conducted a humanitarian operation for a local town fire department. We had a community support request from a local town asking for some equipment to clear a field to create a fire practice field where the town fire department firefighters could practice burning things and putting them out. The project was approved, and we built the fire Platz field. Later, the town was holding an October Fest with fun and games and live entertainment and lots and lots of schnapps and beer. As a reward, the town gave me 2,500 drink tickets to give to the men of the company in appreciation for the work we did. With about 120 men in the company that would equal about 21 drink tickets per person. We made arrangements to shuttle the men in trucks to and from the company and the Platz field giving the NCOs the tickets to hand out and to do courtesy patrols to keep the men under control if they had too much to drink. All went well and the wife and I attended and could not use any of our tickets as the Germans in charge of the event would not let us. They bought all our drinks. We had fun singing umm-papa drinking songs and drinking. It was a great community relations event. The Germans were incredibly grateful for our efforts and my men were very happy to drink the beer.

On an Army Readiness and Training Evaluation Program (ARTEP) for the 568th I was given the mission to build a dirt airstrip on a training site for light aircraft. My Battalion Commander, LTC Strum, had his pilot license and flew a US Army Beaver. I was given one week to make the airstrip ready to land aircraft. It was a rough job as the site was a wet bog making it difficult to create a landing strip. However, we prevailed and at the end of the week the Battalion Commander flew in, landing, and took me for a ride in the Beaver. We passed the ARTEP.

My wife and I were great fans of fresh vegetables so would go to the Hanau Market Plaza every Saturday to get fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market. They also had food vendors there and I enjoyed the curry wurst and pomfrets (French fries) wrapped in a newspaper cone. While I watched the baby, I would get some curry wurst and fries while my wife did the shopping. We very much enjoyed shopping on the German economy. Back then the exchange rate was 4 German Mark to 1 U.S. Dollar.

My orders reassigning me to Vietnam came in November 1969. When first assigned to Germany, we had shipped our car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane, to Germany. We were given gas coupons to use to get gas on the economy if we were not near a U.S. Government facility where we could get gas. Therefore, I had to make arrangements to get the car shipped back to the US. As I recall I had to take it to a port in Bremerhaven, Germany which was a long way up North of Hanau.

When first assigned to Germany I was authorized to bring my guns with me. At the time I had a Colt 1917 .45 Revolver my wife bought from COL Bonak, the PMS at U. Mass. (see chapter 1) giving it to me as a graduation gift. I also carried over my H&R Topper 16-gauge single barrel shotgun. Getting ready to go home, I requested my Battalion Commander, LTC Strum, sign off on a letter so I could hand-carry the guns back to the U.S. with me. Unfortunately, he refused to do that and told me to ship them with my household goods. The Germans who packed our household goods really took a liking to the revolver. When I got home and opened the boxes of property the revolver was missing. I wanted to take revenge on the Battalion Commander but never got to do that.

Figure 4: Photo of a Colt 1917 .45 Revolver

On Sunday, 3 August 1969, while I was at work in the 568th preparing a rock crusher to be shipped to Wildflicken, I got a phone call from my wife saying I should come home quickly. She said she was making coffee in the percolator and timing the contractions. I went directly home, and the contractions became close, so we drove to the 97th Army General Hospital in Frankfurt, West Germany. We had previously practiced the drive to make sure we knew exactly how to go and had a suitcase all packed to go. We soon got her settled into the delivery area. The nurse told me it would be a good long while as she had not dilated very much. I went to the Officer Club next door to get supper. While there the Doctor came in and I asked him how she was doing. He responded saying the Mother and Baby were doing just fine. Darn, I missed the delivery. I hurried back to be with my wife and newborn girl. We named her Cami J.

It was almost 21 months to the day serving in Germany in late November 1969 that I received orders for an assignment in Vietnam. We moved back to the US and found an apartment in Exeter, NH for my wife and new daughter near where my wife’s parents lived. I used my nearly 30 days of leave to be home with my families. Immediately after Christmas I flew to Fort Lewis, Washington for pre-deployment processing headed for Vietnam. The hardest thing I have ever done in the Army is turn away from my wife and 6-month-old baby girl on the tarmac at Logan Airport in Boston and go get on the plane headed to Fort Lewis, Washington and then to Vietnam. Combat was nothing compared to doing that.