;OLi>li:=t; FEATURES

One-On-One With The Chief 6 On June 23. Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan became the 32nd chief of staff of the Anny. In this interview he talks at length about his v iew of the A1my.

Storm Civilians 10 More than 1.600 Army c ivi lians an­swered the call to ervc in Southwest Asia. and many senior commanders credit them with saving the lives of countless soldiers.

Corps Rebuilds Kuwait 13 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is hard at work managing the reconstruc­tion of a nation damaged by war and s uffe ring the effects of S~ddam Hussein 's environmental terrorism.

Pinon Canyon 17 Sound planning, hard work and a deep I y rooted concern for the land have made this Colorado training area an Anny environmental success sto ry.

J RTC - A Little Slice Of Hell On Earth 21 Even combat veterans find there are still valuable lesson. to be learned at Fon Chaffee· . Joint Readiness Training Center.

MLRS In Action 26 Two new high-tech field artillery weap­ons proved themselves to be the real thunder and lightning of Operation Desert Storm.

AUGUST 1991

AUGUST 1991 VOLUME 46, NO. 8

PAGE 45

Credits: Front cover photo by SSgt. Phil Prater; inside front cover photo by Maj. Jim Brown; and back cover photo by Heike Hasenauer.

One Year Later: Yeosock Looks Back 28 The 3rd Army commander talks about p lanning and executing Dese11 Storm.

Back From The Gulf 32 The 928th Medical Company returned to cheers. tears. hugs and gratitude .

Pushing The Envelope 37 For a select group of Army aviators at Edwards Air Force Base . taking air­planes to their limits is all part of the job.

Capturing History On Canvas 42 Army artists in Southwest Asia brought back memorable images of war.

Goodbye Pershing II 45 The destruction of the last Pe rshing II missile marks the end of an era.

In The Shadow Of Cheyenne Mountain 48 From horses to tanks: prairies to moun­tains, Fort Carson. Colo., has it all.

Factory On Wheels 52 The Automatic Building Machi ne made Desert Storm construction a snap.

DEPARTMENTS What's New 2 54 Feedback 4 Postmarks 9 Focus on People 30 The Lighter Side 53 Dateline: Excellence 56

The first Pershing II was destroyed a t Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, Texas, in 1988. Less than three years later, on May 6 , 1991, the destruction of the last of 108 Pershings (above ) ended an era in Army history.

Goodbye Pershing II

A faded sign is all that's left.

AUGUST 1991

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Story by Donna Miles

MlSSILEMEN from the 56th Field Ar­tillery Command used to hate the one­mile stretch of road that leads to the gate of the Mutlangen Missile Storage Site.

Ever since the first Pershing II missiles rolled into Mutlangen in 1983, protests had become a way of li fe along the othe rw ise q uie t st reet in Sc hwaebisch-Gmu end , Ge rmany . Sometimes just two or three demonstra­tors kept the vigil , hurling abusive ges­tures and flashing angry signs. Other times, especially when the 56 th F A moved out to the fie ld, huge crowds gathered in a massive display of dissent.

Some of the more aggressive protestors laid in the street to block military ve­hicles. Others hurled eggs and rotting fruit or spat at the soldiers.

T he Soviets, it turned out, were equally disenchanted with the Pershing II. The system was faster, more accurate and more deadly than any the world had seen - even more than the SovietSS-20 it was fie lded to face. One 56th FA soldie r bragged that he "could sit at Fort Sil l and fire one at the pitcher ' s mound at F ulton County Stadium in Atlanta and hit the infield."'

That precision ultimately drove the Soviets to agree to a plan to wipe out an entire class of nuclear weapons. The In-

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Clockwise, from below: After being cut in half as required by the INF treaty, an erector-launcher is ready to be sold off as scrap.• Anti-missile protests were common in Germany after the Pershing II was fielded in 1983. The Soviets were equally unhappy with the missile's deployment. • Intensive training continued even as the treaty was implemented.

I " . .A,,~

termedi ate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty called forthe destrnction of all ground-launched ball istic and c rui se missi les with ranges between 500 and 5,000 kilometers (3 10 to 3,4 10 miles).

The Soviets stood to lose 1,802 surface-to-surface mi ssiles, along w ith equi pment used to maintain and fire them. The treaty also called for the United States t9 el iminate 846 intermediate­range miss iles, including all I 08 Pershing Ils, their erector-launchers and support equipment. All missiles were to be de­stroyed before May 3 1, 199 1.

The first Pershing II was shipped to the United States for destruction in Sep­tember 1988. Its erector-launcher was cut in half and sold as scrap metal. Less than three years later. on May 6, an 18-mcm­ber Soviet inspection team looked on as the last Pershing II was de stroyed at Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant in Texas. Within the week, the Soviet Union destroyed its last SS-20 missile.

That destruction brought an end to

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an era. The c la ss of dead ly nucl ear weapons that had been most threatening to Europe 's people, its cities and its stra­tegic sites, was no more.

Members of the 56th FA recog­nized the ir role in bringing about that peace. "We did the best that we could ever have hoped for," said SFC Melvin Johnson, an evaluator with the 56th FA. "We brought the Russians to the negoti­ating table." "And we accomplished,, hat we were hoping to accomplish - peace in the world ,., agreed CWO 3 John Fozard.

But in doing so. the 56th - the Army's on ly Pershing II command -had put itse lf out of a job. While the command worked to comply with the treaty guidelines. its 6.000 soldiers turned in equipment, cleared buildings and fin­ished paperwork. Three weeks after the last Pershing II was destroyed. the com­mand furled its colors and inactivated.

Just six soldiers from each of the command 's three remaining battalions.

wi th thei r headqua1ters and service bat­teries, and the 2nd Bn. of the 4 th Infantry Regiment. the 38th Signal Bn., and the 55th Support Bn .. remained to attend the May 31 ceremony at Mutlangen .

M ost of the 2nd Bn., 4 th Inf. "Warriors" who once provided security for the Pershing had moved to the Com­bat M a neu\'er Trai ning Center at Hohenfels. There they prepared for their new role a· C \ITC's permanent-party opposing force.

About 2.000 of the command' s soldiers with Pershing-unique skills were at school reclas ifying into new career fields. Some 500 of them moved into new field artillery jobs. many with the Mul­tiple Launch Rocket System. But most former Pershing oldiers were starting fre h in totally different military speci­alitie . anending advanced ind ividual training in cla srooms full of privates.

··When you take out a class of \\ eapon. you take out a whole class of \IOS :· aid Sgt. Gregory Hill, a 56th FA enli red management NCOIC. He'd pain takingly interv iewed all enlisted oldiers in the command to determine

their choice of MOS and duty stat ion. "'\inety percent o f the so ld iers got their first or second choice," he said. "We used a lot of sensitivity in helping soldiers get what they wanted."

Among them was Johnson, a 12-year Pershing missileman-tumcd-petro­leum specialist. Like many of his peers, Joh nson had assumed he'd stick with Pershing for the rest of his career. He' d been in Schwaebisch-Gmuend when the

SOLDIERS

first Pershing Us were deployed in 1983 to replace the less-accurate and shorter­range Pershing lAs. He'd endured the daily protests, learning the new system and its capabilities as he advanced from crewman to section chief to platoon ser­geant to evaluator.

As a "red hat," he'd gone through countless quick reaction ale11s and several live fires at Cape Canaveral , Fla. , and White Sands Missile Range, N.M. His experience convinced hin1 that Pershing II, and the soldiers who maimed it, were top-notch. "We were good," he said. "We had the biggest. most powerful and most accurate system over here. It 's hard to believe it ' s gone away."

Back in 1987 , news that the INF treaty had been ratified by Congress "sent shock waves" through the close-knit Pershing community. Johnson said. Sol­diers who wore the 56th FA shoulder patch, with its upright missile and light­ning flashes, were o specialized that they rotated only between assignments at Fort Sill and three Ge rman posts: Schwaebisch-Gmuend, Heilbronn and Neu Ulm. "Per hing was a small com­munity and you pretty much knew ev­erybody," Johnson said. "If you didn ' t know them, it was beca use you just missed them. Eventu all y everybody caught up with each other.··

With that familiarity came a lot of mutual respect. "These are soldiers who have stood in the window to go to war 24 hours a day, seven days a week;' said CSM Ian Tompkins. "They were good, and they were ready, and they knew it."

AUGUST 1991

As proud as the 56th FA soldiers are of their role in bringing abouttheINF treaty, many noted the passing of the command with a tinge of sadness.

In the last weeks before the inacti­vation , so ldiers who had once kept around-the-clock alert busied themselves with counting, inventorying. pac king, repacking and shipping. ' ·Everyone ' s running around wi th a briefcase. clear­ing," said Fozard. Brenda Barth. a ship­ping clerk, struggled to keep up with the demand for outgoing household goods shipments. No incoming shipments were arriving at Schwaebisch-Gmuend.

Despite the hustle-bustle of the in­activation, the last days at Bismarck Kaseme were unusually quiet. About 700 of its 1,000 soldiers were gone three weeks before the ceremony. Parking spaces, once at a premium, begged for takers. The snack bar, Baskin-Robbins and post exchange cut their hours. More

than 200 students had withdrawn from the elementary and middle school; one class had just four second graders.

The emergency action center, once the center of activity and message traffic . at the 56th FA headquru1ers, echoed with emptiness. Even the street that leads to the now-vacant Mutlangen Missile Storage Site was quiet - void of Pershing sol­diers. their equipment and the protestors who had taunted them for years.

"It 's all evidence that we did our job," said Johnson. "It' s a good thing. But in spite of everything, I cru1 't help but feel sad watching an era that I ' ve been so much a part of come to an end. " D

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MUTLANGEN TRAINING AND STORAGE AREA

WE SERVE llO ·o PROMO TE WAR

kU I TO PRESERVE PE ACE ELIHU ROOT

FREEDOM IS NOT WITHOUT COST

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