SCHWEINFURT, Germany-Despite, or perhaps thanks to rainy and muddy conditions, a group of maintenance and ordnance Soldiers from U.S. Army Garrisons across Germany received crucial training in wheeled vehicle extraction and removal at Schweinfurt's PfAfA$ndhausen Training Area over two weeks this November.
The 59th Ordnance Battalion from Fort Lee, Virginia administered the training, directed mainly towards Soldiers working in maintenance fields. Schweinfurt played host to visitors from U.S. posts across Germany as well as troops from here. When asked if he came from Schweinfurt, a 1-77 Field Artillery Specialist responded with an emphatic "hooah!"
Soldiers learned how to right overturned vehicles and remove vehicles mired in feet of thick, sludgy mud. According to Staff Sgt. Brian Payne, one of the instructors, disabled and inextricable trucks are a common occurrence during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, where roads are rough and sometimes nonexistent. The burden falls on these maintenance Soldiers to haul the valuable vehicles out for recovery and repair.
The trainers used the HEMTT wrecker and M-1089 wrecker extraction vehicles to teach Soldiers the skills of flipping a truck using a winch and crane, using a large spade dug into the ground as a leverage point and building multi-directional winch anchors to overturn vehicles in precarious positions. Staff Sgt. Payne's eyes lit up when describing this last process.
"What I love about teaching the guys this is that it's physics at work," said Payne. "You build a series of pulleys yourself, you use the winch to lift the truck past 45 degrees and then gravity takes care of the rest."
Lothar RAfA1/4ckert, the garrison's environmental specialist, was on hand to monitor parts of the training. The 1,700 acre training reserve, often referred to as "Area M," contains zones recognized by the German government for ecological protection. Threatened animals such as crested newts, sand lizards and yellow-bellied toads reside within the zone.
"Military training is actually encouraged here," said RAfA1/4ckert. He said the churning of the soil during digging and road-building exercises is essential to the animals' thriving.
Additionally, reserving the area for the military for the past several decades has kept the land free from farming and fertilizers, forming one of the more pristine landscapes in the region.
Staff Sgt. Mark Whittington, an instructor of the extraction training, affirms that this stewardship is upheld by the Soldiers. "The trucks we haul out are drained of oil and hydraulic fluids," said Whittington. "You sure as heck can't have that in the States, so I know you can't have that in Germany. We look after the environment here."
For the rare case of residual fluid leakage, clean-up kits were on hand. The preservation of the training area will prove mutually beneficial for both the German environment and for continued training missions in this strategically-vital portion of the Schweinfurt garrison.
The 59th Ordnance Battalion will return to the PfAfA$ndhausen area in early spring for another round of training. Normally reserved for stateside garrisons, this extraction training is the first conducted in Europe in 15 years, according to the instructors.
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