Hitlers Forest

[Its me]

Hi there thought some of you might like to look at this website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1053635.stm sorry but dont know how to do a link if you know fill free to tell me how and i will change it.

Kyle

[AlienFTM]

In March 1982, 15/19H spent two weeks as the administration unit at Vogelsang ("Birdsong") training camp in the Eiffel mountains of the Ardennes, in Germany almost on the Belgian border. This camp was reputed during the war to have been a Lebensborn camp where Aryan SS demigods and fit young Blitzmaedel were to churn out the next generation of Aryan demigods. The truth is rather more prosaic: it was simply an SS training camp. However, even nearly 40 years after the war, there was no doubting the place's SS heritage, even though the SS insignia on the walls had been cunningly removed. Particularly memorable for me were stone corridors so high and wide that columns of marching SS Panzergrenadiere could march past one another.

 

We did get to to play some puddle-jumping games, though, we being recce, it wasn't our primary role and, being admin unit, we were there more to run the show. As a Control Signaller, I did my fair share manning the radio nets. One one particular morning, in quick succession we got two Noduff messages. Noduff (derived from No DF - No Direction Finding) is a prefix to an exercise message which indicates that the contents are urgent, not related to the exercise and therefore not to be used by "enemy forces" for intellince gathering (which once upon a time would simply have amounted to direction finding the transmitter). It came to hold a status very close to a Mayday in military circles.

 

The first involved an RAOC soldier on an anti-tank range being taught to fire the M72 66mm anti-tank rocket launcher. This a folding, single-shot device which flips open and is supposed to lock open. This particular weapon did not lock open and when he pulled the trigger, the diverted backblast took his arm off. Not nice.

 

We'd barely got sttled back after sorting this bloody mess out when we got another NoDuff message, this one much closer to home. We, B Squadron were duty squadron. Had I not been on radio stag, I'd almost certainly have been in the Squadron's rear echelon 1-tonne Landrover, which, accompanied by most of the FHQ NCOs (less me, on radio stag) was taking norwegian containers and Hay Boxes of stew around the ranges and dropping off lunches for the troops. For those of you who don't know, the 1-tonner is shaped like two cubes stuck together, and Hay Boxes are ginat cubes maybe two feet cubed, so when this 1-tonner rolled off a range road, it was like being inside a giant dice beaker as it rolled ... and rolled. Mercifully my colleagues got away with broken legs and ribs.

 

We managed an Escape and Evasion Exercise which involved being dropped off in "crews" (as if our vehicles had been destroyed and we'd been cut off behind enemy lines) and had to E&E some dozens of miles back to camp avoiding a live enemy.

 

E&E is not particularly my seen, simply because I am lazy but, unusually, I had got myself up for this one and was really looking forward to it. Then FHQ found ourselves short of Commanders for the "enemy" vehicles because they'd all been in the back of that 1-tonner and I got bumped from E&E to commanding a 4-tonner. Not my fault they'd all been hurt but somehow the rest of the Squadron's jNCOs were convinced I'd skived off and I took a lot of flak for it.

 

On another day, our Squadron were running an Infantry Batlle Run which involved engaging the enemy, advancing to contact, clearing building and so on. Again not something we usually got to do, being recce, but good fun. But once again I found myself unable to take part. The former RSM was running this range and needed an operator with a manpack to literally run the range with him. Having driven him on numerous occasions when we were in Command Troop together, I was volunteered. Once again I got abuse for simply running up and down the hill beside the RSM while the troops were getting dirty in full kit and webbing. When I pointed out HOW MANY times I'd run up and down the hill, the abuse stopped.

 

On another occasion we got to advance up a hillside under barbed wire while GPMGs fired live rounds at us, over the top of the wire. Well that's what they said, but to be honest, we'd learned in Northern Ireland to detect the source of incoming fire by listening for the crack and thump of a round going down. Crack is the sonic wave as the round goes by; thump is the sound of the round going off in the barrel. Ignore the former, which could come from almost anywhere, and focus on the latter. But on this day, there was plenty of thump coming from the GPMGs but I wasn't hearing any crack. It's my belief that it was all conspiracy to make us think we were on the wrong end of live rounds. Didn't work for me.

 

Anyway, what does all this have to do with Hitler's Forest and swastikas in the trees, I hear you ask. Well as I have explained, we were primarily admin unit and, not being infantry, didn't get to enjoy so many of the things the infantry "loved" about Vogelsang, which 40 years on still bore witness to a tough training regime.

 

One of the ranges we never got to see involved firing GPMG across a lake. I have since learned that the wood on the far side of this lake had similarly been planted with contrasting trees and apparently until quite recently the swastika was clear to see. It was next to impossible to remove because planting new trees in situ would only change the colour of the swastika unless an exact match was made.

 

Also recently (the same thread on the Army Rumour Service website) I learned that Vogelsang has been returned to non-military use.

 

Anyone ever does a Battle of the Bulge trail, it might be worth having a nose around Vogelsang.

[Richard Notton]

I have since learned that the wood on the far side of this lake had similarly been planted with contrasting trees and apparently until quite recently the swastika was clear to see.

And here it is:

 

http://www.heathenworld.com/swastika/trees.html

[Jack]

Great work Kyle - I will use it as a news item!

 

I remember reading about this sometime back and not to sure why now it has made the news?! This will of happened every year in the autumn since they were planted. It is so easy to rectify - you just fell all of the trees in the block - no need to replant and the natural regeneration will take of that for you :dunno:

 

A most fasinating story....the war is never that far away.

[Its me]

to be fair i think it is a shame they had to cut it down. Jack this out.

 

 

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[cripp]

Fixed link for It's me

[AlienFTM]

Actually, thinking about it, ISTR I got yesterday's post wrong and the emblem in the trees (literally) at Vogelsang might have been a Wehrmacht or an SS eagle.

 

I am sat here Googling for the thread that appeared on ARRSE and I eventually found the thread index using the search key:

 

+vogelsang +" ss " +eagle +forest

 

Then when I clicked on the link to ARRSE I remember that I have come on here because ARRSE just went down. Damn.