The only close call we had was when we thought we had a railcar with warheads go across the East German border. It was a very real and scary situation.
We had two phone systems in my office. We had the regular military phones which you could also receive civilian phone calls on. The other phone in my office was a BASA phone. It was the Germany railway phone system. I used the BASA phone when talking with the rail yard masters. I also used the BASA phones from railroad sidings when I was meeting troop and equipment trains. It was so much easier to call my office from the BASA phone than to go into some small town and find a civilian phone. The phone below looks exactly like the phone I had in my office and the ones at most sidings and rail stations in Germany.
I remember getting a call one day from a railway military policeman who was sitting on a siding just south of Stuttgart. He said, “is this the 594th?” I said it was and he was almost crying. He said, “We lost our railcar!” Once he calmed down I got his routing number (like a convoy clearance number but for rail transportation) and found that he and his men had been guarding a railcar that I thought contained warheads. The warheads were being transported to an artillery unit near Augsburg. Needless to say I contacted the colonel and told him what was going on. Alexander was usually pretty cool but he lost it on this occasion. Shown below is a typical box car from the 1960’s.
Turns out once we got things somewhat sorted out this unit of MP’s took a few cases of beer and other booze along for the ride. The unit was to have three railcars. Two passenger coaches and one box car. The box car that held the “warheads” was placed between the two passenger cars. I have forgotten how many MP’s there were but I’m thinking maybe a dozen spread between the two passenger cars. They were to act as a buffer for the shipment. They had left Bremerhaven the day before and drank most of the way. During the night they were shuffled onto a siding and the two passenger cars were unhooked and left on the siding. The boxcar continued on with the rest of the train.
I called Ulm and Augsburg – no car. I called the Munich rail yard and they said it had gone through on the train to Leipzig. By this time the colonel had shown up as well as Harry Wickart. By two in the afternoon we finally found the railcar on a siding in Munich. The railcar serial number had been misread. The number we were looking for was something like 3300210 and the car that had gone across the border was like 3300201. What are the chances of these two cars ending up on the same train when they had been built prior to WWII????
Turns out there weren’t any warheads in the boxcar, only spare parts. It was still a sensitive shipment because they were parts for the warheads being used at that time. Not sure what happened to the MP’s. I do know that all future shipments were flown into Eckterdingen airport (Stuttgart) and transported by truck to Augsburg. I don’t think the colonel every got over that one. A lot of heat from Group Headquarters in Orleans. Whenever we got heat they never seemed to remember that all we did was schedule and monitor shipments. Hell we lost enough cigarettes and booze each year to supply the entire population of Germany and France. Amazing how a whole railcar of cigarettes could just disappear. It probably still happens.
