4/12 Infantry & USAREUR Historical Research

Thought I'd pass on my plug for Walter Elkins' site (US Army in Germany). If you ever felt like a red-headed stepchild back in Baumholder, disconnected from the world and just counting the minutes until someone shouted BOHICA again, then check out Walter's site and take a spin through fifty years worth of USAREUR history. So far as I can tell, no one else has ever done a more thorough and conscientious job of telling the story of US soldiers in post-war Germany. From individual tales and unit histories right up to grand strategy, he's got something interesting to say about everything and pictures to back it up. DA should put this guy on some sort of honorary pension.

In Baumholder, by the Summer of 1989 . . .

. . . we knew the Soviet Bloc was on its way down. Some clever people who weren't there will try to tell you otherwise, but by the time it was shirtsleeves weather that year we could all feel what was in the wind. East Germans, Czechs, Hungarians and others were already flooding through openings in the Austrian border, and there was even a de facto refugee camp down near Ramstein. It was like the last few minutes of a championship final: we had the points and the other team was never going to be able to pull it back out. You just needed to hold on to the ball, not do anything stupid and wait for the whistle.

At that point USAREUR had already been closing bases and shifting units around for a year or so. For example, the Pershing units had been disbanded, and Hermann was getting even more worked up than usual about taking back the real estate in Frankfurt.

The 8th ID remained in place for a couple more years (mid-1992) before the entire division was redesignated 1AD. I didn't think much of that idea, but I was a civilian in Heidelberg by then and USAREUR neglected to solicit my advice.

So, returning to Baumholder, at H. D. Smith barracks, in that unusually warm and pleasant German summer of 1989, we held a parade and ceremony down at the football field and 1/39 Infantry passed (for the moment) into history, redesignated as 4/12 Infantry. Sure, we kept the same buildings, soldiers and equipment, the same attitudes and approaches, but I think just about everybody could sense a change. The Cold War was ending, and something new was beginning.

Of course, we were wrong about the new thing. We thought it was going to be a quiet period of extended peace, continuing force reductions and lousy promotion prospects. No one I spoke to ever imagined that within eighteen months forces would be headed to the Gulf, or that in a handful of years 4/12 Infantry soldiers would be earning their CIBs in Bosnia. Instead, there was a flood of good people declining to re-up.

Turning back to the purpose of this blog, I should list a few names from those days.

I'm pretty sure that when the battalion-level redesignation took place, LTC Chip Shelverton was still the BC of 1/39 Infantry. I understand that he later retired as a Bird Colonel after a tour through Bolivia and ended up in the State Department working on demining issues during OIF.

MAJ Brooks McAllister was the Battalion XO. I bet he's still laughing about that Lieutenant he caught pissing in the gravel motorpool there at the HQ building. . . .

Where is he today?

Matt Ginn
4/12 Inf (M)
8th ID (M)
Baumholder FRG
1989

p.s. add your name to the roster now!

Welcome to the 4/12 Infantry blog

. . . which is meant to be a sort of on-line beacon to help former unit members find each other.

The general idea here is to establish a free-standing unit page that includes peoples' names, so that it won't be so hard to locate veterans on the web.

I don't plan to run this as your usual web diary, chat room or on-line historical record. In fact, I'm just volunteering to be the link man for the moment, perhaps until someone with more time in the organisation expresses an interest. After all, I was with the unit for only six months or so after 1/39 Inf was redesignated as 4/12 Inf in 1989. Those of you who were there in Baumholder at the time may want to have a look at this blog's sister site (http://www.1-39inf.blogspot.com/).

Anyway, from time to time I'll post a name, place or event that I remember. If you send me your name, I'll post it, and if you're looking for someone, let me know. Likewise, feel free to send me reminders -- for example, names lifted from orders and/or unit rosters would be very handy.

Obviously, the more info I can put online the better your chances of finding someone or being found yourself; however, for the moment, at least, I don't plan to post email addresses without express permission. I'll keep a record offline and will act as a go-between where necessary to put people back in touch.

For the present, I'll watch for comms in the comments. That'll change soon, I'm sure, once the spammers and trolls come out, but for now let's run with the comments.

Looking to the future, my preference is to hand this blog over to someone who spent a couple of years in the unit. Depending on interest, I plan to keep the blog alive for a year or so and will decide whether to keep it going at that point.

Over. . . .

Matt Ginn
4/12 Inf (M)
8th ID (M)
Baumholder FRG
1989

p.s. add your name to the roster now!