<p>My rank when I got out was SP3. My unit assignment was the 175th Signal Company in Angevillers, France. My duty position was UHF/VHF Radio Operator. I served in the 69th Signal Battalion at Fort Meade and went through the field radio repair course and UHF/VHF courses at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. So, I took my basic training at Fort Dix, when I finished with Fort Dix in 1954 I went to Fort Monmouth New Jersey – spent several months there in school. I left there and was sent to Fort Meade Maryland, to the 69th Signal. I was there a little bit over a year and then I was sent overseas to the 17th Signal Battalion in Karlsruhe, Neureut Kaserne, in the Radio Company. I worked on some of the new TRC-24 equipment and I was there about two months and was sent to the 175th Signal Battalion in Angevillers, which is northwest of the city of Metz and Thionville going towards Luxembourg City. Natural features at Angevillers was rolling, very high terrain, there were some hills in the area. Our 150 foot radio tower, which was actually owned by the 102d Signal Battalion, (they also lived on the post). All of our antennas were mounted on their tower and we had a separate building which was next to theirs inside of an 8 foot high barbed wire covered chain link fence. The field of view from the top of that tower was probably, at least 25 to thirty miles in every direction, so it was pretty neat. The roads and everything in the area were quite good, lot of small towns, Angevillers was only maybe a thousand people. On the camp itself, which was actually a French Army Base, (half the base was French Army, half was the 175th) .We had our own separate buildings, our own separate water supply which was maintained by some French civilians. {unintelligible} Motor Pool and probably at any one time 25 percent of the vehicles were down awaiting parts. We had one big building that everyone lived in. All of the Officers lived off post, all of them in Luxembourg. We had no clubs (O club or NCO club or anything like that) except right at the very end they made a little room and called it an NCO club. But unfortunately there were only about 7 or 8 people that could use it on the while post and the rest of us had to make do with a room next door that had a (Oh, I guess they called it a snack bar, but it was not very good.) The 17th Signal Battalion Headquarters was in Karlsruhe Germany at Neureut Kaserne. The 175th in France, the CO was usually a Captain, I think at one time they may have had a Major there but most times there were only Captain and I believe there were 4 Lieutenants that were the head of each platoon and there was also a Warrant Officer who was the head of the Crypto group. I could not remember any of the names, except (let’s see) Captain Vogel was there when I first came, and some of the people remember Captain Vogel but {unintelligible}. He was, I believe, followed by Captain Jones, who was quite strict, but everybody appreciated that. The First Sergeant was named Zerk (sp?), I believe. But really had some personal problems and was borderline on having a breakdown since he was always screaming. I understand that shortly after I left that he was sent back to the states or removed from his position and sent somewhere else. We didn’t carry any weapons except during an alert and during an alert we were all issued carbines and others were issued machine guns and a few other things which went in specific places around the post. During the alert, all the UHF/VHF people ended up going up to the radio station which was on the top of a hill about 1 klick away and we sequestered ourself inside this big fenced in area. I can’t remember whether they gave us ammunition or not, I don’t know. We did have two medical people – not medical techs – two medics. And they were pretty good. The nearest doctor or hospital was a clinic in Metz which is about thirty miles away and we had a couple of instances where people were hurt in accidents pretty bad – one guy got hit with a baseball bat accidentally in a ball game and he ended up getting put in a civilian station wagon and taken down to Metz and loaded on a helicopter and flown to Wiesbaden Germany. He made it but he was in pretty bad shape. During an alert, the unit was in a French Army Post which physically sat on top of the Maginot Line. And we had a lot of our emergency stuff down in the Maginot Line which we referred to as the hole. During a large alert operation our base became a very, very important operations center and we moved out of our barracks into tents (the ones that had to live on the base) and most of the people that were in the barracks at that time were bird colonels and up. There was a separate area set aside for helicopter landing to bring in some of the staff level officers that were mostly one or two stars. Everyone ate in the same mess hall and as far as the ones that were up on the hill working at the radio station we had our own vehicles so we just took turns coming back down for chow and then going right back up again - until the alert was over. As far as being deployed during exercise, we did have a couple of field operations in Germany that people from Angevillers were sent back to the 17th temporarily to participate in some of these field exercises. Most of those took place in Southern Germany and Bavaria and the Wurzberg area. I did mention that the 102d Signal (Microwave) Battalion had a unit that was on our base and they maintained their own microwave link and that microwave link went from {unintelligible} into Templehof in Berlin. That had microwave radio relay towers about every thirty miles all the way across Europe, ours was about in the middle. About the radio equipment we used, all of the stuff we had on our station was based on the TRC-24 equipment. We did have some malfunctions but we always had spares and the people on duty were trained enough so they could put in one and be back on the air in less than 5 minutes if one did fail. All the time I was there, I only saw one major failure – and it turned out we didn’t have any parts to fix it and it had to be sent to a Signal Corps repair depot in Verdun, I believe it was. We did have landlines of our own that went from the mod and demod units up on the radio station down underground to the base and from there they were sent down underground into the message distribution area down in the Maginot line in the hole. Communications Security really wasn’t compromised because – I guess if somebody else had TRC-24 equipment and wanted to listen in they could - but as far as communications security went most of the messages that were sent that were of a security nature were sent via crypto lines which ended up going through our equipment anyway both in and out. Jamming and countermeasures {unintelligible}– we didn’t have any problem with that. Our communications with subordinate units – we did have a link to the 516th Signal Group in Metz, France, which was an area level Signal Support Group. That was about thirty miles away and we had four people that manned a station within a camp that was in the city of Metz – I don’t remember the name of it. [unintelligible} Kaserne, I think it was referred to. That was pretty nice, we came and went as we pleased, four of us covered that station 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We did live in our own room which was in the local Kaserne. We did eat in their mess hall. But since we were working 24 hours a day 7 days a week the only thing we really had to do was keep our area clean and we also helped them clean up the latrine which was right around the corner from where we worked, so it was pretty good. Key messages were delivered to us – as far as alerts go – whoever was usually called - sent usually by a crypto message – which then in turn went to the CO and then distributed and at the last minute it went over – we had a PA system within the compound – and everyone knew where to go. We usually had all of our emergency equipment up and all of the emergency circuits worked probably within 15 minutes. I was there from June of 1956 until August of 1957. I enjoyed all of the time I was there, unfortunately if you were TDY from the 17th to the 175th from Karlsruhe, your chances of promotion were slim to none. If you were assigned to the 175th permanently, then you got a promotion, but if you were assigned there temporarily from Karlsruhe, you didn’t get any promotions at all. When I left, I had gotten E-4 (I was in the Army I think about 12 ½ months when I made E-4) so when I got out I had 2 years time in grade and never got promoted. That rather bothered me in that when I got out the National Guard and Air National Guard in Connecticut were bugging me for almost two years because of the MOS I had. My cousin, who was a Captain and a pilot for the Air National Guard wanted me to join but I had made up my mind before I went in the service that the main thing I went in for was to get the GI Bill and I came out, I used the GI Bill to graduate from {unintelligible} college at the University of Hartford and after that I worked in the computer industry for 40 years and retired in the year 2000. Here I am! OK – you do a good interview. We’ve got just a couple more questions before you just go head on out. I think you’ve covered most of that, but if you could elaborate on any of those Personal evaluation of the operations of the unit: I think the 175th – it was a rather unique thing because we were away from our overall command by well over 100 miles and we put up with a lot of crap that we probably wouldn’t have put up with if you were in a larger installation. But then again, too, because you’re in smaller installations everybody knew everybody else and everybody could depend on the other one and there really wasn’t any back-biting because it wasn’t that big a unit. The only thing I can remember about interoperability was that all of the last three months before I came back to the states we started training French Army troops in the operation of the TRC series of equipment. We had taken the directions, which were in English, and somebody translated them into French and the Senior Master Sergeant who was in charge of the group training – he spoke English pretty good – and a couple of us – one guy spoke fluent French and I knew enough French so I could carry on a conversation, so that worked pretty well. Administration: We did our own orderly room, with the CO and First Sergeant and the Company clerks there. Logistics and Maintenance: The maintenance of all the radio equipment we handled ourselves. Logistics left an awful lot to be desired because if something broke, it was just about impossible to get replacement parts – you had to ship it out. We could fix it in 15 minutes if we had the parts but unfortunately even though a lot of us had been sent to school for radio repair, we didn’t have the parts to do it. Enemy: The only ones we had problems with in the area and we knew enough to stay away from – there were several small towns, probably about 10 miles away that were in the mining area and there were a lot of workers from Algeria who really caused some problems. We had a couple guys that were jumped on one night and one got his head split open with a bottle. And he wasn’t bothering anybody – they just jumped him. We knew enough to stay away from there from that point on. Living and working conditions: The barracks were in pretty good shape and we worked on them to keep them clean. We did have oil heat – unfortunately because we were at the top of a mountain sometimes during the winter time they tend to get ice storms and if you had an ice storm the oil supply trucks couldn’t make it up the mountain, so you might end up sleeping in a sleeping bag for a few days until they’d get an oil supply. We lost electricity a couple of times and when that came back on they ran out of oil, so what they did is they hooked emergency generators up – took them off the radio trucks and hooked the emergency generators up to the mess hall so we could eat . Family Housing: There wasn’t any. All of the Officers had family housing outside of Metz. Any NCOs that were married usually lived in the town of Dudelange, Luxembourg and we did have 7 people from our group who married girls from Luxembourg. There was no PX, the closest one was thirty miles away. There was no commissary – that was thirty miles away, in Metz. Medical Facilities: We just had 2 medics and facilities with a doctor were over thirty miles away. We had no gymnasium – we did have an outside basketball court, a fair softball field, and a volleyball court and that was it. Automobile: You could have an automobile as long as it was properly registered. I went to and from Europe on a troop ship which was fun. The only troop train I ever road on was when we went on maneuver when I was at Fort Meade. It was called “Sagebrush”. It was in Northern Louisiana we lived there for three months in the boonies. This was when we were first being field tested on the TRC-24 equipment. Clubs: The really were no clubs where we were. The only thing is that we had a bowling team, basketball was just “pick-up”, and we also had a good softball team. Recreation: Usually on Wednesday afternoon, until one of the NCOs got the bright idea that the recreation every Wednesday afternoon ought to be a 5 mile hike. So we knew that a lot of the guys were in pretty good shape but that this NCO (that it was his idea) was so-so. So we picked up the cadence for two weeks in a row to much higher than he had it and we left him in the woods about a mile before we got back. So we all got back and waited for him to drag in and that was the last time we had a 5 mile march. Chapel: We had a chaplain come in for Protestant services Sunday afternoon, and we had a local Catholic priest that came in every Sunday morning. He spoke fluent English. I was single at the time. What did the 175th do? What was their mission in conjunction with the 17th? To provide emergency communications during alert types and up status from forward operating positions in Germany to Command and Control Officers who would be located down in the Maginot Line where we were. Who were your best buddies in the 175th? Let’s see, the ones I remember best were probably I knew Gordon {unintelligible}, we still keep in contact with him, Bud {unintelligible}, another fellow by the name of Bill Berkheimer who lives outside of Pittsburg, another fellow by the name of Edwards who was originally from Massachusetts, Don Diener who was from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There were a few others I didn’t know, but not as well. I did take a long 2 ½ week road trip with a fellow by the name of Gene Kerman from outside of Denver and Lee (can’t remember his name) from Connecticut. We went for 2 ½ weeks in a car and we went through 6 countries. What can be done to make the Association stronger? Well, some of us are not that younger and some people are starting to have medical problems which precludes their travelling long distances. But if you want to go to a meeting, instead of driving now you fly, because you can get pretty cheap airfares. Over the years I’ve heard people say “well, we want to be near a military post or we want to be near a military hospital”. And as far as my personal opinion is, those are not valid excuses any more. Even if a person is retired Military and has an emergency of any kind, that person is allowed to go to any hospital anywhere and be treated – does not have to go to a military hospital. As far as going to a military post, you don’t go to a reunion of something to see people just to go to a military post – you can go to a military post anytime you want. And I think one of the reasons why the 175th – and I probably have about 60 to 65 on my mailing list don’t go is that one, it’s too far, it costs a little bit too much, because money’s getting tight and I suggest that at the next one they ought to try Branson Missouri because it’s right smack in the middle of the Country and it’s very, very easy to get to. Last year, be a year ago last May, I think 7 of us go together in Branson just for a little mini get – together of the 175th, we had a great time. They bent over backwards to us and especially around Memorial Day or Veterans Day they really bend over backwards to accommodate veteran’s organizations in Branson. It’s cheap, I think we went just before school got out, in the end of May, and I think it was about $55 for a hotel room. And we had a big meeting room which they didn’t even charge us for. Do you have any 175th or 17th Signal Battalion mementos you’d like to see preserved at the Signal Center Historical Record Division? I have a lot of pictures. As a matter of fact, a lot of them I have on a CD and I’d be glad to give Monroe a copy of those. Do you have any information about potential members? Gordon and I have sent quite a few of them to Bill Moore. I think we might have 10 people from the 175th that have joined at one time or another. How many people here now from the 175th? Just three that I know of. But there’s a couple of others that are friends of – those two sisters that are coming that were formerly married to members – they were from Luxembourg and married guys from the 175th. They’re coming because they want to see a couple of other women from Luxembourg that are here. What events would you like to see at the 17th Signal Battalion Reunion? Oh Boy! I think one thing too is that there should be some time set aside where people in attendance could – like all my pictures I’ve dumped onto CDs. And if you had a projection thing from a laptop into a projector – show some of these old, old pictures that people might have – and if they’re only available in hard copy have them made available for everyone to look at. When we were out in Branson last year we made a concerted effort to bring every picture we could get our hands on. And one night, all we did was lay the hard copies on a table and the ones we had on CDs we projected up on a screen. And it really, really brought back a lot of memories. </p>