These are some personal notes that describe some of my memories and opinions of the organizations that I served with in an Army career that spanned nearly 30 years. If you find this site by accident through a search engine you are welcome to contact me and share your thoughts. Thanks. My e-mail address is BradenClan@ gmail.com.

I learned that I would be assigned to Headquarters, United states Army Europe, while closing out the 370th Engineer Company. My duties would be with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Engineer.

In preparing for this assignment, I drove up from Kaiserslautern to Heidelberg to check things out. I was shown a huge office with three people working there, each at a desk. This would be my place of duty, and they hoped to get me a desk and a chair. On my next visit, with the time growing short until my official arrival date, I visited again. No desk. No chair. Promises and excuses but no desk or chair. Back at Kaiserslautern I explained situation to my First Sergeant. No problem, he said. Shortly thereafter I officially signed out of the 370th and into ODCSENGR. I entered my office area for the third time. The other three officers were staring at me. My area now had a desk. Also a chair. A very, very nice desk and chair. And also an area rug, a bookcase, a desk lamp, a lampstand and a couch. And the desk had pens, pencils, paper and other office supplies. If you want something done right, give it to a good NCO.

I was assigned to the MOUSF Branch of the Construction Division. MOUSF is pronounced like "mouse if." It stood for Modernization of US Forces. You see, US forces had been in Germany for many, many years. Their presence provided security, but also put a lot of money into the German economy. In return, the German government provided a sizeable amount of funds to modernize US barracks and maintenance facilities, many of which went back to WWII and were in terrible shape. It would be my job to supervise the program for the VII Corps area.

It took a while to figure out my job, as my predecessor was gone and there were no instructions on what to do. I learned that there were a number of "players" in the MOUSF process. The US Army Engineer Division, Europe provided engineering design services for VII Corps communities for this major renovation work. Resident Engineer Offices of USAEDE provided the local oversight. Community Commanders represented the users, and had a lot of input on what needed to be done and when. The local Facility Engineer, part of the community commander's staff, would be responsible for the maintenance of the facility once it was done, so there was an interest there. Also, the local FE would have really old buildings to maintain and -when the renovation was done - he would be able to better use his maintenance money. So it worked like this: I would be notified by USAEDE of something like that Phase II of the Wuerzburg MOUSF program was ready for initial review and approval, and that a meeting had been schedule in Wuerzberg on such and such a date, and that would I be able to attend. Of course I would attend, but I appreciated the courtesy.

I also was aware that the pot of money for renovations did have a limit. The Community Commander would, of course, want as much of the money as possible going into his community. USAEDE really didn't care where the money went so long as they got their share for engineering services. It dawned on me that I was the person who had to be sure that the funds were fairly and equitably spent.

And so I would typically show up in a military community at the date and time of the meeting. Getting the review approval to proceed was a big day, so the Community Commander and all the other players would be there. They all knew each other so there would be hand shaking and story telling. To begin with I didn't even know the USAEDE reps so you could find me standing off to the side observing the festivities. Mostly I observed until the time came for introductions and it dawned on everyone that the USAREUR approval was needed to make all this happen. Then I got exceedingly popular, and invited to sit often at a place of honor. Funny what controlling the checkbook can do to relationships.

Such power can lead to a big head, but I didn't get one. At the meetings, if everything was okay then I said so. If I thought that the community was trying to "get over" then I said so. At one meeting things didn't seem right and I asked if they wanted me to go back and re-compute their authorizations in terms of spaces that could be renovated. The Resident Engineer, who had come to know me, jumped in and told everyone that that they really didn't need a recalculation and that they were perfectly happy with what they had at that point. It was also nice to know that my branch chief and division chief fully supported my work. If I said something was good to go - it was. And if I said otherwise that's the way it was too.

One interesting thing about the job was that it involved travel, and that I typically travelled by German train. I had blanket travel orders that were posted at the Rail Travel Office, so the administration of tickets and such was eased greatly. US military, by agreement with the German government, travelled first class, and that was a great benefit. In the first class cars mostly I had a compartment by myself. I did my work at the table while the countryside rolled by. My hosts at the other end were often able to pick me up and drop me off at the station, or I simply took a German taxi. In many cases I was able to travel out and back in one day, as opposed to a two day trip if going by auto. And the train ride was most relaxing as compared to dodging traffic on the Autobahns. I do recall at one city I was picked up at the rail station by the local Facilities Engineer, taken to the meeting, and returned to my gasthaus room in the evening. The next morning I got up to catch the train back home and called a taxi to get me to the station. The taxi ride was one block. I had a gasthaus right next to the station and didn't know it.

The Heidelberg barracks had a racquetball court, and I found time occasionally to play. But it also had a single squash court in its own building. One of the other MOUSF staff officers, Jim Davis, and I both played squash, and there were apparently few other players. Mostly we had the court/building any time we wanted, which was great.

One night Karen turned up missing and the whole neighborhood was out looking for her. We found her. She had gotten mad about something and hid under her bed. And fell asleep. And that's where we found her.

While at Heidelberg I was promoted to major. This was something the Army called a "below the zone" promotion and it meant that I would be promoted earlier than my contemporaries, an exhilarating, but humbling, event. For the promotion party, Bonnie and I rented one of the tour boats that normally took visitors along the heidelberg River to see the heidelberg castles. We loaded the boat with food and beverages and had a promotion party that our guests probably still remember today.