Badge of Rank?

[otasan56]

On my USN ship off Vietnam I was part of the boarding party, armed with an M14 semi-auto rifle and an M1911A1 .45 ACP pistol. I was a USN E-4.

 

[herrwalther]

The modern military niche that sidearms are a badge of rank is the USMC. I know plenty of 03xx series Marines who have never seen a M9 let alone fired, qualified, or deployed with one. Most Marines I talk to say that only the Gunny and officers carry pistols as a hard and fast rule.

 

[kBob]

I was totally unaware of the Bader Meinhof group until I saw that movie about them. I guess they were like Germany's own Weather Underground.

Well, if the WU had a fair number of its members trained in the Soviet union by either SPETNAZ military troops or KGB schools for terrorist, IF WU had a fair number of folks that had spent two to four weeks in along the Lebonese/ Syrian boarder training in Popular Front For the Liberation of Palistine camps and a sprinkling of folks that had seen the elephant in various places with various "Libeation Armies" and if WU actually kidnapped an American Soldier and when the US government refused to even listen to their demands murder said US Soldier in view of the gate guards at a US military installation, kidnap another and us his car to rig as a car bomb and to gain access to the Frankfurt USAF base with its windshield sticker and tag and detonate it in the PX parking lot, if WU had placed bombs in cars in US housing areas and caused casualties, if WU had placed a bicycle bomb a the7th Army HQ and detonated it (that one was poorly planed and sited thank goodness), if WU successfully bombed American "Oclubs and BOQs, if WU had successfully invaded a French weapons storage area and made off with blister agents, and if WU had managed to hijack a shipment of Heckler and Koch HK53 5.56mm Assualt rifles and gave them as gifts to every nutball reddish group in Europe and kept plenty for themselves and if WU had morphed into The Red Army Faction......... then yes they would have been "Germany's own Weather Underground."

Comparing WU to B-M Gang would be like comparing a group of circus clown wanna bees to say the 1st Ranger Battalion.

One was a bunch of disgruntled college "professors" and some misguided students with delusions of grandure and the other a professional trained political terrorist organization with national backing of "the evil empire"

I "lived" in Neu Ulm across the river from Ulm in the mid 1970's ( my mail went there though I was usually elsewhere). The cities are on opposite banks of the Danube so are in two different states but are pretty much considered a single "metropolitan area". At the time the area had the largest Palestinian Community outside the middle east. US forces got regular printed threats supposedly from various Palestinian Liberation groups and B-M. During 74-75, in the Ulm/Neu Ulm area, one B-M member killed a German Policeman and was himself killed (two man police patrol investigation citizen report of weapons sighting, hand gun failure and MP success, BTW ) and another in a different incident was captured and a third and fourth escaped an attempted arrest and appearently left the area.

WU would have been tickled pink ( I guess that is an appropriate shade of Red for a USA group) to be compared favorably with B-M and the later RAF (yeah confused us too but the Euros used that for Red Army Faction in the 1980's) Some of us thought the name change from B-M Gang to Red Army Faction was more a public relations move than a real change, though B-M had lost much of its older core leadership by then. Those HK53 won them friends and allies all over Europe.

-kBob

 

[kBob]

I was a 95B and of course carried a 1911 when on duty, until I was sent to Germany in 1973 and assigned to a Hawk Missile unit (ADA). In my battery we had a 10 man MP detachment (1 E6, 1 E5 (me) & 8 enlisted) and we shared one 1911. Whoever was assigned to the front gate of the TAC site wore the pistol anyone else carried an M16. Bader Meinhof was a real threat in those days. When the Battery took their yearly trip to the field the Battery Commander took the 1911 as it was his in the TO&E. A Captain, 3 Lieutenants and 2 Warrants assigned and 1 .45 cal. Pistol. Badge of Rank.... Yeah.
This was typical of non-front line combat and non-combat units when I was in 1972 to 1978.

On Combat Alert Sites (CAS, sites with mated Nuke Warheads on 56th FA Pershings) during that same period Infantry filled the security jobs, both the directly assigned to the battery "point guards" that enforced the two meter "NO LONE ZONE" around a mated warhead and members of an actual Infantry Regiment that had the duty of providing security around a nuke warhead storage area and security of every thing else out to 5K out patrols. When assigned to that duty everyone was issued a rifle so they could pull tower security and escort and patrol. The two M-60 on CAS at anyone time had no tracer in their links and we used no tracer in out rifles to prevent fires and some thought a ball round into an engine less likely to cause detonation. As the designated 60 gunners on the Security Alert Team and Backup Alert Force (ok actually the shift off towers and gates for that three hour period) were whomever drew the short straw those gunners carried M-16A1 rather than 1911A1s. When the actual platoon gunners used the same guns "in the field" or when one went on an armed patrol outside a CAS then a pistol went with the gunner.

On one site we worked there were only two fences rather than the three where we usually worked. The Security fence gate faced the direction of the totally separate "Cantonment Area" and the X (exclusion) fence Gate was 180 out and 200 plus meters away. Each of those gates had a two man team. One guy opened and closed the gate, did the security checks, and was up close to folks and the other over watched him with a rifle. The Gate Control Operator had both a rifle and a 1911A1, both loaded. When inside the gate house he had his rifle, but he left it behind to go out to the Gate and had only his 1911A1. It was not in the SOP, but it was not at all unusual for the Operator to unflap the holster and fold the flap back out of the way and some even placed there firing hand on the pistol and used the off hand to do all the other work with.

On the three gated CAS the "Contol Gate" in the cantonment operator worked alone.....the building where the BAF sleep off shift was immediately behind him. It was decided that the 1911A1s were easier kept in the arms room than kept track of on CAS so only a couple lived at the Sargeant Of the Guard shack down between the S and X Gates that were more like an airlock there, with barely room for a five ton to park between the gates when closed. During a battery change that did not include signing over missile launchers that were on site when both gates had to be open at the same time to aloe an erector launcher and its prime mover through, a full squad and M-60 team were deployed and "hot" just inside the X inner fence. During warhead exchanges using Chinooks we deployed multiple road block/ over watch positions with crew serveds and "hot" out to about two K.

Two armed foot patrols a night were run out to three K. Sometimes platoons would get lazy and simply run one long patrol a night half before midnight and half after and call it two patrols. One of those every night patrols was occasionally done as a motor (Jeep usually and three man) patrol armed out to 5K and in periods of tension (such as high threat) the motor patrol was sometimes added in addition and might even be two patrols.

When up on the border as Infantry, training without the 56th FA anywhere near us, or working with the SF Group each platoon had a platoon leader armed with both a handgun (some used privately owned weapons) and an M-16A1 rifle, Two M-60 gunners and two assistant M-60 gunners armed with 1911A1s, two m67 90mm AT gunners and two assistants all armed with m1911A1 so five 1911A1s per platoon. For some reason there were two additional M1911A1 in the arms room designated as belonging to our platoon and these were issued when folks were on some sort of extra duty like payroll guard rather than issuing an assigned M1911A1. Our battalion's three rifle companies had four rifle platoons with no Mortar Platoons just as some airmobile units during the then just over war and all mortars were consolidated at Battalion. HHB had as a result a huge Mortar company with both 4.2 and 81mm tubes, a AT platoon with 106RR jeep mounted, and a recon platoon equipped with jeeps.

When I came back to Germany in the Early '80's as an evil Red Leg Officer I was stationed in Hanau and lived in a nearby village "on the economy" renting a private apartment rather than living in a housing area. I rather liked living away from work and what I figured for local ground zero if things went REALLY BAD. About a week after I moved into my peaceful little village I had cause to be in the back yard late at night (work often kept me late) and noticed a good bit of sky glow over the back hedge. Figuring it to be the local soccer stadium or some such I grabbed my binocs off my go gear in the back seat and strolled through the back gate into a huge field behind the house. The glow was from just beyond the slight rise in the hill in the field. I walked upslope.

There, perhaps 1.5K from my apartment door was an area surrounded by double fences, with 150 watt lamps pointing out every ten meters, very familiar looking guard towers at every turn in the fences and concrete pads bearing missiles and launchers and two pads bore missiles enclosed in the white engineer tape used to denote NO LONE ZONEs and little guard shacks close to them. Hawks rather than Pershing but Dang! just Dang! it seems I could not get away from nukes for trying!

-kBob