Charlie Battery - Kleingartach/Hardheim

Welcome to the web site of the original Charlie Battery, 3rd Missile Battalion, 71st Artillery Nike Ajax and Nike Hercules Guided Missile Base. This is the original Charlie Battery Nike Site created in Circa 1957 - 1958. I arrived there in the Summer of 1959, after month with Delta Battery at Gerszewski Barracks in Kneilingen, just outside Karlsruhe, Germany.

This web site is years too late, but I am determined to make sure that Charlie Battery has a presence on the web. I have the IT skills and a stash of images, so I thought... why not? It has come about mainly because I woke up one morning in the winter of 2010 and my first thought was to Google the 3rd/71st, and I couldn't believe the information available

Prior to creating the web site I had no contact with any of my old Charlie Battery buddies. One of the main problems being that almost everyone is in the Midwest, East, and Southeast, and with me being in California, it made distance primary factor. However, since the site was published many old friendships have been renewed and new ones made also. The positive feedback and support for the web site has been most gratifying and rewarding.

In researching this site I asked for, and received the official Charlie Battery semi-annual rosters of January and July 1960 - January and July 1961, from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. I used these rosters to help reconstruct my memory and it really helped to to identify those people in my images whose names I couldn't remember. Please visit the Archives web page to view and download these rosters.

In doing further web research on the 3rd/71st I came to find that the site was later moved to city named Hardheim about 60 or 70 Kilometers north of Kleingartach. The reasons why seem to be sketchy and unclear. Maybe someone who has more info can fill in the blanks.

Charlie Battery...

As you will see we were way out in the country, high up on the plateau of a massive lump of earth, isolated and by ourselves. It wasn't really a mountain, but to visit any of the cluster of villages around the base of this lump one had to take the one road way down the hill. And going down the hill, unless you had a car and almost no one did, meant walking. Walking down and walking back up, and at night it was very dark, cold, rainy, snowy, etc.

If one needed to go on sick call, it was 40-50 Km. ride in the back of a duce and a half to the large city of Heilbronn on the Neckar River. Because we were isolated we really had to rely on each other, so we were a close knit crew.

Everything took place in the single 3 story barracks that housed everything. The entrance was in the middle of the building with the first door to the right just inside the double doors was the orderly room and the BCO's office. Passed the orderly room on the right and double wide stairway on the left and down the hall was, the supply room to the left, a small “Bier Garden”, and a turn to the right down a few stairs and through swinging double doors was the mess hall.

Now we had a great mess hall, we had great cooks, and great mess sergeant named Sergeant Otto. The mess hall was small, personal, small tables with table cloths, almost like a small cozy cafe.Even KP wasn't that bad a duty. After meals, with the chores done, we could often go upstairs to our room and hang out and rest, or go to the day room on the second floor.

On the second floor was a small PX, the armory/mail room, the mail clerk was also the armorer, housing for NCO's, Spec-5's and some Spec-4's. The third floor had large rooms on either end