U.s. Army Helped German Town Rediscover Its History

[Viggen]

The village of Ladenburg, just north of Heidelberg, has the allure of many charming towns in Germany

[Ursus]

This article touched me for some reason. I don't know why. I'm glad the GI's could help the German townsmen.

[Virgil61]

This article touched me for some reason. I don't know why. I'm glad the GI's could help the German townsmen.

 

There's an interesting reason for this. The US Army has spent, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in the last fifty years doing this kind of reaching out to the communities in the parts of Germany units were stationed in. The reason is that countless German farms, fields and other propety were very often damaged by units manouvering during training, traffic disrupted, noise levels raised, etc., and millions were paid out as compensation to farmers and landowners.

 

This gave Army units a very strong incentive to mitigate bad press by co-operating with locals, fostering good will and making nice by doing this kind of thing.

[Onasander]

That, and also because were're really nice people who care.

[Virgil61]

That, and also because were're really nice people who care.

 

Yeah. I remember a bizarre pre-exercise tasking where we developed posters pointing out how much the US Army spent in the Bamberg area and a POC # to report any property damage by US soldiers; had them printed up and then deployed from Ft Bragg to Germany for the actual exercise.