Home of the 525th Ordnance Company and the 556th MP Company. The Siegelsbach Army Depot is primarily concerned with providing security for its special ammunition and repair parts. The facility also supplies direct and general support maintenance as directed by brigade headquarters.
Ordnance area at Siegelsbach Army Depot
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By gamma @ 2006-12-04 16:56:47
We walked guard.
duke had a habit of biting his handlers so I got the job
Check out towerrat.com for more info and old friends
1sgt Retired
We got to leave Germany early when the shutdown began.
I am German an live about 5 miles away from the depot.
The German Army used the Depot till 2010.
I just returned from a vacation in Germany. When the wife and I stopped at a store in Siegelsbach for directions a Forest Miester was there and offered to give me a tour of the old post (he had a key to the gate). Luck was with me that day, I would not have got in without him. I stood in my old barracks room that had the door blown off during a recent German Army building entry drill. (best thing that ever happened to it since the darn lock always gave me trouble anyway!). The whole post was overgrown with trees and all seemed to be returning to nature. Not a painted rock to be seen anywhere. The motor pool where I got most of the gas for my old VW was still intact. The bunkers on the hill now had solar panels on top instead of troops swinging sling blades.
Until now this place was a fading memory and something that my wife would endure my stories of. She now appreciates the memories. To see the place in this condition was like attending a funeral of an old friend. But I was glad to be there and put that memory to rest.
If you want pictures email me. roypastorek@gmail.com
Retired MSG
TOUR OF DUTY. MOSTLY DUE TO THE FATASTIC PEOPLE I SERVED WITH. SWEENEY FROM BAYONE N.J.
GENO FROM PA. . YOU GUYS TOOK ME INTO YOUR HOMES AFTER WE WERE DISCHARGED AT FT. DIX
AND I WISH I COULD THANK YOU IN PERSON FOR HELPING ME THROUGH A ROUGH TIME DEALNG
WITH MY FATHERS PASSING WHILE WE WERE IN GERMANY. I HOPE IF YOU GUYS READ THIS YOU
WILL CONTACT ME , AS WELL AS RETIRED MSG WITH THE PICTURES. REPLY TO RANDYMIKE@SOCKET.NET
Tim Miller nicknamed T Crispy.
CW4 (R) Ron Henry
The installation was a "Closed Post" operated by the 525th Ordnance Company, a part of the Advanced Weapons Support Command. It was located on an old Wehrmach installation and consisted of two parts. One was new with NATO Earth Covered Magazines and tightly secured with high fences, dogs and tall wood frame guard towers. The guards carried live ammunition and often on those pitch black German nights when jumpy guards would be disturbed, probably by deer, shots would be fires. Often to reduce boredom the guards would remove the propellant from their cartridges and replace it with straw. There were numerous burn marks on the floors of the guard towers from the flash of the propellant when it was ignited. All of us were amazed that none of the old wooden towers ever caught fire because of it. Each year as the guards had to requalify, we would have numerous misfires due to the lack of propellant in the cartridges.
The unused part of the depot was an old Wehrmach ammunition storage area, reputed to have been used to store the NAZI rocket warheads. It was heavily wooded with of the old storage bunkers and roads imbedded in the ground about five feet. It was mostly unused in the late 1960's. A few old magazines were used by the 23rd Ordnance Company to store ammunition (mostly Honest John Rocket motors) for USAREUR/Seventh Army units.
There were old concrete pads out behind the depot used to store inert and mostly obsolete munitions parts. Early in the 1960's they became the subject of a major Stars and Stripes story about a "Nuclear Warhead" sent to the Heilbronn power plant to be burned. Actually it was a NON NUCLEAR WARHEAD, NON EXPLOSIVE SKIN SECTION that had, inadvertantly been left inside its box when the box had been sent in to be burned. Several others were discovered in those outdoor pads and transported to another installation for eventual distruction. One of them eventually became the steeple for the chapel at US Army Fischbach Army Depot.
Remember SFC. Campos (my platton sergeant) My partners SGT. Swenney, SGT. Greer. Sgt. Gutshall, Golidy, Finch. Tate, and many others. I was the only spanish speaker in the unit, so when I met this guy who learned german at high school, we start going together everywhere, so we met alot of italian, german, spaniard, and people from many countries in Europe. We even dance with german at private parties and had a great time. We liked to go Bad Rappenau and Wimpfen. Eiscafe Cortina, my closed friends at Rappenau. What a time...
I remember the German base across the street, can't believe the hole in the fence was still there in '79.
The convoy training and field training were good experiences. Thankfully I never got lost. I remember one night in the woods the Captain I was with apparently got disoriented. I told him where we had to go to get back to the platoon camp site and he didn’t heed me. We rode around for a while and he became frustrated. I told him again where we had to go. His response was “why didn’t you tell me”. I got the impression he wanted to save face. I also remember in training we provided better perimeter defense than the field Artillery guys. Here’s another one…Take those rocks out of the tires! Dennis Vega reedbro@comcast.net
lullo_j@cityofelgin.org
John "bundes" casten ekcasten@yahoo.com
Richard Ellis
Love to hear from you
Baperance@albanycc.cc
There with all of the 3rd herd.
SFC (Ret) Frank Horton
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Schoffer, Tempelton, CrawDaddy, Tomcheck, sfc Keemer, McGuire ..... just a few names from when I was there. Also remember someone getting pretty well WASTED on duty and trashing a jeep.
Very fond memories of the German people, the local food, many historic places, beautiful countryside and great public transportation. Wish the same could have been said of the U.S. Army. In the way of clarification, sending young U.S. men far from their societal and family constraints back home brought out the best and the worst in enlisted men as well as in the commissioned and non commissioned officers. Sadly, many Germans bore the brunt of this, often seeing and experiencing the worse from their American military guests.
Returned to Germany several times in recent years. The scenic spots like Speyer and Heidelberg are now over run with foreign tourists and there are pizza places on every corner -- something unheard of back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Thomas Wolfe once wrote, "You can never go back home." So it is with the many fond memories of Germany from those bygone years. A ride up the Heidelberg tram cost about 50 pfennig back then. It's now more than 10 Euros. Hauptstrasses are now blocked off as pedestrian thoroughfares while surrounding streets have become a maze on one way traffic. The list goes on. Perhaps U.S. cities are no different in that regard.
We now live in a time where NATO is trying to justify its continued existence by rattling one saber or another. The expenditure in national treasure should have fallen precipitously immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations, but no, things struggled on for decades until we have the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.
The Cold War was allegedly fought to counter the Soviet Union and usher in an era of peace. We former Cold War warriors served to that end, but the Cold War and even a few hot ones continued on in a steady stream one after another like a "Wheat Thins" commercial.