________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Underneath those two, who were at the three-star minister level, were Ministerialdirigent
Dr. Korte from Defense and Ministerialdirigent Dr. Klaus Fischer from Finance. These
division chiefs at the brigadier level--they're all civilians, mind you--focused on our
particular activities. These were major interactors with the DCSENGR. I had known
Dr. Korte from my previous tour. The senior minister in Finance, Hubrich, had been a
prisoner of war during World War II in Florida and spoke perfect English and was very
pleasant to deal with. Dr. Shaefgen was also a very nice person and easy to deal with. Dr.
Korte was slippery as an eel. You just really had to watch, and not necessarily believe what
he said. Dr. Fischer seemed initially to be pretty pleasant; later on he really became a very
difficult actor.
To get back to my story--there had been an injunction. Local citizens had gone to court to
stop construction of the Bradley range in the north part of the Wildflecken training area. That
part of Wildflecken was in the state of Hesse. The southern part of Wildflecken was in the
state of Bavaria. The major tank range that I spoke of, that we actually got to start more
quickly, was in Bavaria, which is probably why we got to start it.
So, we had to work with different regional entities in working these problems. The Hessians
were always more difficult to deal with and were difficult about noise in and around
Frankfurt, and so our dealings in Hesse had been a lot more strained and difficult. Here we
were in court on the Bradley range. We badly wanted to start both ranges because the modern
training of our soldiers, that they were getting elsewhere, needed those kinds of live fire,
shoot on-the-move ranges to be able to properly train.
This was a high-priority item to push, and so I had many meetings with Defense and Finance
officials in Bonn, trying to get them to move forward, and it was always very difficult. We
got into noise, which was the big factor in both ranges. We got into measuring decibels of
noise, and groups of citizens and officials would go out, and their experts and our experts
would sit there and try to measure decibels. From our view, the decibel levels fell, once you
measured them accurately out where the people were listening to them--fell below the
standard the Germans were setting. Nevertheless, the people weren't satisfied with that and
kept up the attack, trying to get us to close down and not build the range, period. So, we had
many interesting times with that, trying to articulate the reasons.
The Germans had outlawed lawnmower use on Sunday in their towns. You couldn't cut your
grass on Sunday because the noise would bother your neighbors. The noise we were talking
about from our 20-millimeter Bradley weapons two miles away from the town was
considerably less than that a neighbor would hear from a lawnmower.
When I left, that Bradley range project had never been started. I don't know if it has today,
frankly.
Q:
Well, on the German side, you had to deal with their federal system, I guess, the federal
agencies, but then the state, and then even the localities. There might be a different
perception from what level you were talking about on the German side.
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