TO ALL ASA COMM UNIT VETS

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 6 TO ALL ASA COMM UNIT VETS FRED'S CORNER NO. 2 JUNE 2010 Here's a wartime combat report dated March 26, 1945 describing the 6 th Armored Division of General Patton's Third Army attacking Frankfurt. The quality of the microfilmed newspaper text was too poor to read easily, so Dan Thacker reprinted it for us visuallychallenged vets.

2 Page 2 of 6 In December 1944 General Eisenhower moved the Supreme Allied Headquarters from London to Versailles, France. After the end of the war he moved it to Frankfurt. The I. G. F arben building had been chosen to be Ike's SHAFE Headquarters even before the war ended. There is a story that Ike had wanted any Allied pilot who damaged the building to be court-martialed. I don't know if there is any truth to that story, but if there is, some pilot had to pay for the bullet damage to the west side exterior of the building.

3 Page 3 of 6 Sometime back Bob Moseley sent me a fascinating post-wwll video showing the Farben Building's elevator system of paternosters. In Latin "pater noster" is two words meaning "Our Father" so I imagined that the term was a prayer for protection that the contraption would work and not hurt you. However a website on paternosters explains that the continuous movement of the elevator's units resembles a rosary and the name is derived from that. I and others who didn't use the paternoster on a regular basis always had a moment of trepidation just before jumping into "the shoebox elevator" as Bob Feller called it. But some, like Toney Hogan, used to ride it over the top and or down through the basement

4 Page 4 of 6 for thrills. Anyway, the video shows some well-dressed visitors, including a Soviet officer, on a bus ride to the Farben building. You can see a lot of the war damage to the buildings in the surrounding area as the bus makes its way to the front of the building. You can also see the barb wire fences around the building's perimeter. The MPs in this video graciously help the women visitors onto the paternosters and escort them to an office where an army officer greets them for purposes unknown. atch?v=yxfzbhtawyy Bill Lang and his sister Margaret visited Germany in 1991 and found the Farben building surrounded by fencing and a guard station and were unable to get near or enter the building. The U.S. military formally returned the building to the German Government in After some protracted local issues, the government then converted it into its present use as the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat's Humanities Building. The paternosters were preserved and are in use today. John Greene told me that "During our 2004 ASA reunion trip to Frankfurt, we got on and rode them up to the new library (5th floor) which was our former ASAE HQ. Terminal Station area where I worked when I was stationed in the Farben Building in The paternosters are beautiful and the same beautiful polished mahogany wood, I remember. They are used daily as another means of getting up and down the floors along with the stairs and the regular elevators, etc." I thought you might enjoy seeing this mid-90's Army map of Frankfurt that I found on the internet. As it notes, almost all of the U.S. military facilities in the Frankfurt area were closed by One of the few open facilities left was the Armed Forces Radio Network. You can also match much of the following to the photo of the I.G. Farben building and surrounding area shown above. U.S. ARMY MAP OF FRANKFURT in use in the 1990's. Compliments of the Connecticut National Guard, which had units on TDY in Frankfurt in the 1990's. Below is a center section of the Army's last known map of Greater Frankfurt before the closing of nearly all U.S. military facilities in the area in the mid 1990's. Most of the street names and landmarks were still relevant to the period. Drake Kaserne is on the north and Kennedy Allee is on the south, leading to the Flughafen, or airport. At the bottom of this page is a reference guide to the numbered points on the map and to other special spots. Be sure to print out a copy of this map for your next trip back to Frankfurt!

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6 Page 6 of 6 GUIDE TO ABOVE NUMBERED POINTS 6. U.S. Consulate 16. Commissary 7. Abrams Bldg. (IG 17. Main PX Farben) 18. Topper Club (NCO) 8. FKT American High 19. PX Gas School 9. Terrace Club Station/Garage 20. Armed Forces 10. Network Idle Hour Theater 11. Civilian Personnel Office th General Hospital 12. Carl Schurz Housing th Officer's Club 13. FKT American Ele. 24. Plantation Club School 25. Motor Pool No FKT Community HQ 15. FKT Housing Office Note also the following popular or well-known spots (from bottom of map to top): Sachsenhausen (not named, but in middle of map just south of Main River) Main River pedestrian parks (on both banks) Hauptbahnhof (main train station) Kaiserstrasse (starts at front of Hauptbahnhof) Frankfurt Messe (exhibitions, fairs, etc.) Eschersheimer Tower (a familiar landmark) Palmengarten (botanical garden) Hauptfriedhof (main cemetery - historic) Nidda River (romantic places to park a car) I hope you enjoyed this edition of Fred's Corner, especially those vets who lived off-post in the qovernment facilities. Fred Gerstner fqerst@verizon.net