An Army of Self-Helpers on NATO's Front Line

By William A. Henry III.

At Buedingen, a U.S. Army base near Frankfurt in West Germany, helicopter maintenance crews do much of their work under tents instead of in hangars. They use jury-rigged lighting and, in cold weather, kerosene heaters that military regulations prohibit as safety hazards. Across the road, 36 armed M-60 tanks stand ready to go to war--if they can churn their way out of a vast mudhole that turns into a pond whenever it rains. At Fliegerhorst barracks near Hanau, 15 miles south of Buedingen, helicopter repair crews have taken over the base's only gymnasium. They repack drive shafts on the basketball court beneath a sign that reads NO DUNKING ALLOWED. At Rivers barracks near Giessen, nearly 3,000 soldiers are crammed into what was a Wehrmacht military prison during World War II. "The tip-off is that the barbed-wire-fence topping points in, not out," says an officer stationed there.

There are more than 240,000 Americans in uniform in West Germany stationed at three dozen bases that are supposedly part of NATO'S front-line defense. Yet the Pentagon's $20 billion facilities in that country are woefully obsolete and inadequate. The maintenance backlog for U.S. forces in West Germany has reached $1.3 billion. Soldiers live and work in conditions that could cause riots in U.S. prisons. The G.I.s, fortunately, do not riot. They just quit the Army at the end of their tours. When the plum job of command sergeant major opened at scenic, historic Heidelberg, the first three men chosen left the military rather than take the assignment. Those who stay often turn to alcohol and drugs, including heroin. Brigadier General John S. Crosby, who until March was commanding general of the Hanau complex, says: "Inadequate maintenance inevitably produces poor morale. Drug and alcohol abuse are inevitable byproducts."

The deteriorating bases in West Germany are not the result of policy but lack of policy. Since the end of World War II, U.S. bases in West Germany have been regarded as "temporary." For years Congress refused to authorize funds to improve them on the ground that it would be a waste of money to maintain facilities that were surely about to be abandoned. The Viet Nam War made maintenance of these bases a secondary concern. After that, improvements were further delayed while diplomats and Army brass tried to persuade the West Germans and NATO to share the cost. West Germany has agreed in principle to offer "host support" but has yet to appropriate a pfennig. Meanwhile, there remains little pressure in Congress to improve maintenance--especially abroad, where jobs would largely go to foreign civilians.

The consequence for U.S. forces in West Germany is not just low morale; there is a growing concern that they could not mobilize quickly enough to ward off a Warsaw Pact attack. According to Maxwell D. Taylor, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shortages of well-maintained equipment and of supply units generally mean that in Europe and elsewhere "regular divisions, no matter how prepared themselves, are not in fact ready to perform their combat missions."

Morale would probably be bad anywhere that U.S. soldiers had to sleep 18 to a room, as some have had to do at Hanau, or where soldiers took their exercise in the middle of an active firing range, as at Ayres barracks near Butzbach. But conditions seem especially intolerable in contrast to West German prosperity, both military and civilian. American facilities almost all predate World War II. Some are World War I cavalry stables. In comparison, the bases of West Germany's Bundeswehr were all built after the country was permitted to rearm in 1955 and are meticulously maintained. At Hardthoehe, for example, on the outskirts of Bonn, grass is closely cropped and bald spots are quickly reseeded. Some of the yellow brick barracks are only five years old, and they have Thermopane windows and new, automated heating systems.

G.I.s wash their tanks outdoors with garden hoses, chipping off ice in winter, watching tanks settle three feet deep in mud in summer. "You won't ever see a single U.S. tank in West Germany that's truly clean," says SP/4 Kim Kosko of Smethport, Pa., who is based at Buedingen. West German soldiers use outdoor motorized wash-racks in summer and heated buildings in winter for tank maintenance and cleaning.

Housing at U.S. bases in West Germany is so short that thousands of soldiers, many with dependents, have been forced into the "local economy." Families may pay $800 a month--more than twice the housing allowance given men living off-base--for apartments that Army inspectors classify as "substandard" or even "uninhabitable." In Hanau, enlisted men must wait an average of 73 weeks for a two-bedroom apartment on-base. In Fulda, junior officers must wait 101 weeks for base housing.

G.I.s in West Germany frequently react to their hard ship with gallows humor. A sign in a maintenance shop at McNair barracks near Frankfurt reads WE'VE DONE SO MUCH WITH SO LITTLE FOR SO LONG THAT NOW WE CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING WITH NOTHING. Indeed, "self-help" is the slogan of the day. G.I.s have worked long hours, and used considerable ingenuity, to keep the tanks moving and make their life a little easier. But even such efforts have their pitfalls. At Monteith barracks near Fuerth, a master sergeant who had served as a Green Beret in Viet Nam was reprimanded and reduced in rank after a court-martial last January. The sergeant had bartered his way around snafus in the supply system by exchanging commissary cigarettes for paint, plywood and labor on the local economy to build a handball court for his men. "The guy's a hero, not a criminal," protested one of his superior officers. "He took a dump and turned it into a place of pride. The real crime is not trading cigarettes but the fact that he had to do it to improve the quality of his men's lives."

--By William A. Henry III. Reported by Lee Griggs/Bonn

With reporting by Lee Griggs

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