Grafenwoehr

Comments made yesterday indicate that Grafenwoehr (Americans typically call it "Graf")....will see American soldiers finally leave.  The US government indicates that the brigade kept there....has been selected to be one of the two removed from Europe.  They also said that they'd keep the post open, and the training range operational.....bringing in some troops from the states on a month-by-month basis to conduct training.  So your unit in Georgia might get a notice to deploy 400 guys to Graf for thirty days of training.

The impact?  Well....there's about forty million dollars a year spent by Americans in the Graf community.  This covers beer, food, apartments, car repairs, etc.  From the 7k Germans who live in Graf....around 3k of them work in some fashion for the Americans (on-post and off-post).  Some grill burgers....some do transmission work....some serve beer.

I imagine most Germans from Graf woke up this morning and mostly are in an anxiety attack.  Some built huge houses and rented out the bottom-half of the house to American families, at an exorbitant amount of money ($2k a month).  Who will rent at that rate?  No one.  A local German probably wouldn't pay more than $800 max.

Pubs and pizza operations?  They will suffer greatly.  Even if this training deployment deal occurs.....the guys coming in for thirty days will mostly train, and probably only get three days off during their deployment.  So out of a dozen pizza operations around Graf....most will close.  Same way for pubs.

Back in the 1990s....I was sent to Graf for two occasions.  The first one was this overnight trip.  I went with a second guy and we installed a satellite system one afternoon.  We were going to stay overnight.  So we looked for a hotel opening on post....nothing.  They gave us three possible places off-post, and each was full (at 6PM when we drove to each).  We branched out five miles....just driving....nothing.  We drove to some fancy hotel about twenty miles away, and it was full.  So around 10PM that night....we drove back to Graf and slept in the Volvo station wagon.  I learned then that Graf has some serious limitations.

My second trip?  A two-week adventure via the Air Force.....to stay in some 1960's style building with just bunk beds.  No toilets and almost no heat.  We got up and walked 200 feet to some building that had showers and toilets.  It had hot water from 5AM to 7AM, and 5PM to 7PM....and that was all the hot water they had.  If you walked over to the civilized part of the post....they had this million-dollar gym and a great movie theater.  But it just wasn't a place that you wanted to spend two weeks.

In two years as the brigade leaves Graf and the locals wake up to the new reality....I'm guessing that a 1k Germans eventually are forced into leaving the area.  You'd have to drive almost an hour to get to any real town with potential jobs, and even that might be limited.  In ten years.....the town will shrink down to 3k people....with various empty houses just sitting there.

It's a sad end to Graf.  It probably deserves better.  The German government might come in and offer up some incentives to start manufacturing there, but you aren't going to have any technology-smart folks around this town.  And I doubt that it will find a way to keep the population up to where it is today.  Americans will remember their time around Graf.  I'm guessing five hundred thousand Army guys (active and retired).....going back to the 1950s....will raise a beer tonight.....to the time they spent at Graf.