Charlie Battery - On The Road

The best part of going to Baumholder was that it was a hell of a lot of fun. A group of GI's were picked to get international drivers licenses. Once that was out of the way we got to on the road, that was a great time. We always had to have an assistant driver, so we tried to get someone who you got along with. They were called assistant drivers, but as I recall, they never got behind the wheel.

We drove 5 ton cargo trucks pulling a missile trailers, taking stale missiles to Baumholder and bringing fresh missiles back to the battery. There were usually at least 5 trucks in the convoy crusin' down the autobahn.

Besides being a lot of fun, it really helped to get away from the battery and its confines. The freedom of the open road is seriously therapeutic, seeing new vistas, new cities, and all that goes with it.

As I recall the biggest problem we had was negotiating the very narrow county roads we had to take to get over to the autobahn. We once came face to face with a wide tour bus and I had to go so far over to the right my tires went into ditch that always is along country roads. It took a 5 ton cargo truck with a winch to pull me out.

We got our tactics out on the autobahn down pretty good. We were always keeping track of the traffic conditions and terrain.