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TO ALL ASA COMM UNIT VETS

TRIVIA QUESTIONS: What does Dachsbau mean in English? What was the name of the park where Dachsbau was located? Dachsbau was just off what street? What was Dachsbau used for by the German army in WWll?

TRIVIA ANSWERS: Badger's Den, Grueneburg Park, and August - Siebert Strasse. Dachsbau was used as a mess hall by the Germany army during WWll (per Joe Tovarek). The German army leased the I.G. Farben building in 1940 for office space and used Dachsbau for dining. I'm presuming it was for enlisted personnel and that the building directly behind the Farben building (the Officers' Club) was for officers. Grueneburg Park is said to have been used to hold Allied POWs as one website states or for war refugees as Joe tells me.

THE DAY DACHSBAU BURNEDTHE DAY DACHSBAU BURNEDTHE DAY DACHSBAU BURNEDTHE DAY DACHSBAU BURNED

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Did you know that Dachsbau, the ASA Frankfurt Communication Center, had a major fire on December 8, 1971 that led to its closure? I didn't until I started this project. I was on the phone with Ray Anfang when he brought up the subject of the fire. It was the first I had heard of it and it led me down a curious and interesting path. Ray was an MOS 345 Crypto Maintenance & Repair SP5 and a Duty NCO at Dachsbau. He later transferred to ASAE S3 at the Farben Building where he was promoted to SSgt. He spent thirty years in the army with an incredible list of duty sites including Viet Nam, Iran, Presidio of San Francisco, Vint Hill and TDY trips all around the world inspecting crypto facilities. He retired as a Warrant Officer in 1985.

Ray was long gone from Dachsbau by the time of the fire. However, he said he had been very concerned about an electrical overload at Dachsbau long before the actual fire. A little known modification to Dachsbau was a completely separate Comm Center for either the Air Force Security Service or NSA (he's not sure which). Ray took part in this installation and the additional power requirements concerned him. He submitted an engineering letter to the Dachsbau OIC with statistics and data suggesting a potential overload on the incoming power cables. The OIC studied his data, concurred with his calculations, and forwarded the information to Arlington Hall and NSA. When the reply finally came back after several months, NSA and its so- called experts decided there was no cause for alarm. However, this and future additions of equipment may have led to electrical overheating at the facility. This is conjecture on my part, but plausible in view of later events.

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After my call with Ray, I made a mental note to follow up on the fire whenever I could find a second source. That came with my locating Don Hoskins. Interestingly, Don and Ray were both promoted to Warrant Officer (WO2) on the same set of orders. They have a friendly feud going regarding who was promoted first. Don says it should be him since his name was above Ray's. Ray says he has more service time and therefore it's him. But we will let them settle that with dueling pistols. Anyway, I asked Don, who was with ASA in the Philippines at the time of the fire, if the fire was the reason for Comm Unit shutting down in Frankfurt. He thought not, just that it had happened at the same time as a general downsizing of ASA. Bad Aibling, Herzo, and Rothwestern were scheduled for closing and ASA was consolidating operations at Augsburg . Contingents of HQS USASAE had moved to Augsburg in 1969 to start up operations there. (For more information on the consolidation type "Field Station Augsburg Veterans' website" into your browser.)

I still didn't have anything concrete on the fire until I finally located Tom Vanderhoof. Tom and I came over together on the USNS Upshur troop transport in the bitter winter of January 1963. Tom and Ron Radenz, both 723s, were two of the first guys I tried to locate when I started this project. I found Ron in the Houston area, but had a very difficult time finding Tom. I remembered him being from north Jersey , but I had no luck in locating him in the tri-state area. I had almost given up on him until someone told me he had re-enlisted and gone career. If you remember, Tom was our unit mailman back then and a very good one. He often went out of his way and by-passed regulations to get mail to the Trick workers. He was promoted to Sergeant and returned to Dachsbau where he stayed until November 1966 when he married Pat, a British national. He returned to Frankfurt in June 1971 after a stint in Stuttgart, extensive AUTODIN training at Ft. Monmouth, and a tour in Viet Nam. When I brought up the subject of the Dachsbau fire, Tom dug out his scrapbooks and forwarded two English and one German newspaper articles on the fire (shown below) and also gave me his first hand account. For those having trouble viewing the small print, there is a full size text version of the main article below the box

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Tom Vanderhoof's Recollections

As I remember the fire did burn through the roof over the battery room, also called the burn bag room. It was not a big hole. In fact the fire department may have cut the hole to let the smoke out from the area where the fire most likely began. I pulled several weeks of clean-up sanitizing the area after the fire with several other folks. The building was intact and lighting within the building was supplied with some tactical light kits which were obtained from some other unit.

Water was about 2 to 4 inches throughout the entire structure. Wet paper rolls and soggy tape would not burn until they were dried out and then they still smoked a lot. All the equipment was covered with tar-like stuff that would not come off even when using gasoline (most likely the most powerful cleaner available back then). The stuff was everywhere, and with that stuff and the water all the equipment was totaled out.

The fence around Dachsbau was single chain link with barbed wire on top. When I arrived at the fire, the German Fire Department was wrapping up getting ready to leave the area. The Army Fire Marshall (Tom Collins, AFN program every Saturday morning) was on the scene and I believe I heard him say that the German Fire Department had done a fine job gaining access to the building. They didn't use the vehicle gate but used chain saws to cut holes in the fence. The Emergency Plan for the MP on duty was to allow for the access of Emergency Personnel and get the usual who, what, and where after event. Which is what happened, at least I think so. Well there you have my two cents as well. Tom

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Here is another account of the fire that I that I found on the internet. I forwarded it to Tom and asked for his comments which are shown above. Some items in this account are questionable, such as the roof collapse and SMLF, but I took it verbatim from the internet.

Source: Email from Paul McKennon, USASA Comm Unit, Eur in Frankfurt, 1970-72.

I was reading your history of the ASA in Europe and thought I would drop in my two cents. I was a 31J TTY Repairman assigned to USASA Comm Unit Europe from November of 1970 to November 1972. The unit was housed at Kennedy Kaserne (The White House). It is on the corner of Escherheimer Landstrasse and Bremer Strasse. It is only about a quarter mile from the IG Farben building. I returned there in 1977 and it was just an abandoned building. Our Communications Center was located on the edge of Grueneburg Park beyond the IG Farben building from the Kaserne. It was referred to as Dachsbau. It was a single story structure surrounded by a double chain link fence topped with razor wire. Next door was an area where the Germans would walk their dogs.

I believe it was early in 1972 when this building caught fire and burned to the ground. I was in the barracks getting ready for a midnight shift when someone came in and said Dachsbau is on fire. We ran to park and upon our arrival found the building burning and the German Fire department standing in the street in front of it held at bay by our diligent ASA MPs. As we stood and watched the roof collapsed and pieces of teletype tape and paper began to rain from the sky and blow into the park. I picked up a half burned piece of paper, and there, big as life, was a message with the words Top Secret in the header. I showed it to a Warrant Officer standing nearby who had just come to the same realization. His reaction was immediate. He yelled to the forty or fifty of us standing around to find all this stuff and pick it up. So we ran through the park and found all we could. We weren't the only ones picking it up. I even saw a couple of guys from the SMLF (Soviet Military Liaison Force) out there on "Police Call." It was a mess.

During the next 60 days we rebuilt the comm center on the fourth floor of the Farben building where the Air Force security service was kind enough to share their facility with us. We shared this facility with them until I left in November of 1972.

When I enlisted in the Agency in 1969 it was a four year enlistment. In the summer of 1972 the enlistment was reduced to three years and everyone on their first enlistment got a one year early out. Almost half of our unit went home on the same day. It was crazy. When I went home in November we were so short handed we could barely function.

During my tour there we hung out at the Furstenberger Eck and a little bar called Der Stube. The Penthouse Bar was another favorite hang out since they had a dance floor and one could occasionally pick up a chick there.

In the beginning we ate midnight chow at the mess hall when we were on mids. Unfortunately one night almost a whole trick got food poisoning and the CO put the entire unit on separate rations. What a deal - 68 bucks of additional beer money.

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Also that year, the Bader Meinhof bunch put a bomb in the lobby of the Farben building and as I recall one in front of the O Club behind it Some of my pals and I were in the park when they went off. I had to pull CQ at the White House that night and It was really scary sitting behind that desk in a glass lobby.

It was a great tour and a great job. I loved it.

The resulting fire, while not all that severe according to Tom, resulted in heavy smoke and soot damage to the equipment. It started around 01:00 a.m. and was not fully extinguished until around 05 :00 a.m. The equipment within the operations area (on the relay floor, FCO, TTY Repair and the COMSEC section) had little to no fire damage. However everything was covered with residue from the smoke and whatever chemicals the fire department used to extinguish the fire. Major damage was done to the communication and power cables that ran the length of the wall between COMSEC, M&R and battery room. This, coupled with the inability to clean the equipment and also the standing water, forced the decision to rebuild the Comm Center elsewhere and quickly.

The decision was made to move the operation into the Farben Building to several areas that were no longer being used by the Air Force and could provide the needed security. All new equipment was air lifted from the states to Frankfurt. It was installed and had us back in operation in late December or January (not really sure of the exact date). However, the term Tape Ape as we were called really described what we could do when the chips were down. I saw those Tape Apes (72Bs or 72Fs) actually swinging from cable racks while helping get the new cables for the Comm Center installed and returned to operation.

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After the fire and clean up I became a Special Training/Cutover NCO using my MOS 72G40 which was a Data Communications Specialist/Sergeant. I was one of the first holders of this new MOS. ASA communications was starting to be automated with what I was trained for in 1967 through 1970 - AUTODIN, which stood for Automatic Data Communications Network. I traveled to the border sites and Berlin, training the Comm Center operators in the operation of DSTE and IBM communication devices.

January 1973 saw us being PCS'd to Augsburg. Duty in Augsburg was out at Gablingen which was an old Army Air Field at some time in the past. ASA built an ASA Field Station at Augsburg with a big antenna which was dubbed the Elephant Cage because it was so big. Duty out at Gab was in the ASA Commcenter, area K or L and across the hall in area K or L was the AUTODIN switch which had seen duty in Southeast Asia.

Eventually, all ASA Frankfurt operations were moved to Augsburg. Thus ended an ASA era in Frankfurt that started back in March 1946 when HQS ASAE moved into Gutleut and started operations at the IG Farben building...

DACHSBAU FLOOR LAYOUT

The attached floor layout of Dachsbau was conceived by Chuck Clarke and greatly expanded upon by Tom Vanderhoof for the final version. I hope it brings back some memories for all of you. I know it certainly did for me. It is formatted in Excel and can be sized from 50% (full page) on up by using the Excel Toolbar

And speaking of memories, I would like to get one from each of you to include in a special follow-up issue on Dachsbau. I would especially like to hear from those who have not participated so far. It only takes a minute to bang out an email to me at fgerst@rcn.com. The Dachsbau Comm Center was our workplace for most of our army career, and I'm sure each of you has a special memory or two to share.

This is an interesting one I was copied on last Fall from Bob Moseley, an MOS 053 Radioman who operated the radio hut (van) parked at the back of our Dachsbau compound. "I just got your latest email, and I think you're right about Sgt. Landis being the photographer. Now I recall photography WAS a hobby of his. Some times I can't believe how much I have forgotten. Autumn brings back some memories for me, especially the chestnut tree that grew on the compound by our radio hut. The Germans used to wander by and admire all the chestnuts that had fallen, so I would fill a small paper sack and they would meet me at the gate and I would give it to them. Now and then one of them would throw a cloth shopping bag over the fence to me and I would put a bunch in for them. Lots of good memories. So, thanks again for your help, Warren. Best regards."

ADDITIONAL PHOTOSADDITIONAL PHOTOSADDITIONAL PHOTOSADDITIONAL PHOTOS

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Fred GerstnerFred GerstnerFred GerstnerFred Gerstner