Spc. Luis M. Villegas, 20, from Fontana, Calif., and Spc. Jose Vega, 22, from Eagle River, Alaska, move a box heaped with black fleece jackets at Ray Barracks' central issue facility Tuesday. Both are members of Heaquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. (Matt Millham / S&S)
FRIEDBERG, Germany — Walk down the streets of Friedberg these days and something is noticeably absent: U.S. soldiers.
The scene isn’t much different a few blocks away at Ray Barracks, headquarters of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division.
Parking lots are mostly empty. The main gate is closed and locked. Lines at Burger King and the post’s small Post Exchange have been replaced by lines of soldiers waiting to turn in their military equipment or book flights to their next home.
Locals are divided on the soldiers’ departure by how the exodus affects their pocketbooks. U.S. troops, the few that are left, are scrambling to leave or scrambling to help others get out. Civilians who work for the military either already have plans to move on or are scrambling to make them.
It’s not as if nobody knew this was coming. The Department of Defense announced the closure more than four years ago, and soldiers learned last June that the 1st BCT would inactivate and move to the States.
But those were just announcements.
“It seems more real now,” said Spc. Christopher Woods, 23, from Susanville, Calif.
Woods, of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, has spent the past three weeks working at Ray Barracks’ central issue facility, which distributes and collects equipment such as sleeping bags, helmets and body armor. Because soldiers have streamed so quickly from Friedberg and nearby Giessen, where about a third of the brigade was once quartered, Woods and nine other soldiers were tasked to help the facility handle the crush.
Nearly 3,200 of the brigade’s roughly 3,800 soldiers already have turned in their gear, said Kevin Newport, a retired first sergeant who manages the central issue facilities at Friedberg and Giessen.
“Everything’s like a ghost town,” Newport said.
Another sign of the exodus can be found at Ray Barracks’ TKS office, which provides phone, Internet and cable television services. Soldiers can cancel their service and get it turned off the same day, which means, “If we cancel today, they’re gone tomorrow,” Sven Wells, the shop supervisor, said.
Nearly all of the 250 or so contracts soldiers signed after returning from Iraq in February have been canceled, Wells said.
Outside the gate, Friedberg’s residents have noted the diminished presence of U.S. troops with a range of reactions.
Friedberger Brauhaus, a popular destination that got about half its business from soldiers on weekends, already has seen its soldier clientele cut by about 75 percent, said Claudia Schuler, who works there.
Of course, the Brauhaus is taking in less money, but the soldiers that came in were also a source of entertainment for the staff, Schuler said.
“We miss it,” she said, adding that the U.S. exodus is sad “not only for our Brauhaus, for all of Friedberg and the Wetterau,” a 25-city region within the German state of Hessen.
That sentiment isn’t held by everyone.
At The Personal Touch, a tattoo and piercing business just off the main strip which, with its English name gives the appearance that it’s trying to solicit American clients, the U.S. exit is welcomed.
“It makes the shop run better,” said Lucky, the tattooed, pierced, one-named fellow in charge of poking holes in people. He said soldiers were notorious for making appointments to get tattoos and then not showing up. He’s glad he hasn’t seen a soldier in more than a month.
A soldier or family member still might wander in to get inked or skewered, but that’s not likely.
“Those that are still here are rushing to get out,” Woods said.
