AMTC Silberhutte

Located in the Hartz mountains near Sankt Andreasberg was an old ammunition factory and housed the Army mountain training centre and I was naafi manager until it closed in 1990.It had accomadation for about 200 people and was used all year round for adventure training I may have some photos of the place but as i just found this site today i will have to check later.

Hi Tom, welcome and those photo's would be much appreciated mate.

Tom Dickson wrote:

Located in the Hartz mountains near Sankt Andreasberg was an old ammunition factory and housed the Army mountain training centre and I was naafi manager until it closed in 1990.It had accomadation for about 200 people and was used all year round for adventure training I may have some photos of the place but as i just found this site today i will have to check later.

I was stationed at silberhutte in 1973/4 I think
was an RN on deployment as a ski instructor
any body around there at that time?

During the summer of 1986 the company (53 Company 5 Ord Bn Barker Bks Paderborn) had a fortnight at Silberhutte. Did the usual stuff, PT, hill walking & climbing. It was the only time I ever visited Silberhutte and to be honest I preferred summer camps in Bavaria or the Mosel.

In 1976 (ish), a squad from 3 squadron 1 Armd Div HQ & Sig Regt spent a week in the old ammunition factory with the aim of blocking up sealing up the windows of one of the blocks, and tidying up in preparation for what was to become the AMST (JSMT) Siberhutte or at least a small part of it. It was then just a shell with a door. We took along the regimental ski collection (barely 2 the same), and had a go at skiing. I think we got the basic elements right, snow, hill - down, just needed to work out how to stop at the bottom.

Never got to go back on a snow queen course though. One of the drawbacks of being a data teleg, always got some proper work to do.

Welcome Steve...I take you are a Scaley..If so double welcome.

Ski-ing, Adventure Training, Hill Walking, Summer Camps!! I don't bloody believe it!!

Good fun if you could get it, I did manage 1 snow queen, but then like Steve, I had a real day job

Me (271) on winter warfare at Silberhütte...1963/64?

Nice photo there Jock

Is this the start of a race of some sort??

I worked there as an instructor, winter 1985/6. Left for instructors course Oct 1985, returned to unit mid April '86. Best 6 months of my time in the army :-)

We used to ski most weekends in the Harz but I can't for the life of me remember where.

I do remember the drives coming back in the old Bedfords to Hohne in Winter !

Hello, my dad S/sgt Glyn Creser was stationed at the AMTC in 1980-82 as Chief Clerk with a Major Hooton if I recall correctly. They were rather lonesome days for us kids as there were no other army kids around. I would go langlaufen rather than downhill skiing, and one early morning as I set off, I heard loud drunken singing and much laughter and rounding the corner where we lived just opposite the AMTC, copped a bunch of naked squaddies with nowt on but their skis. Thankfully they didn't see me, but it was one of the funniest things I ever saw there.
We attended Windsor Girls' school as there weren't any army schools there and we didn't want to go to a German school.

The AMTC around 1981

This is proper 'down memory lane' for me. I went there for 2 weeks cross country skiing when I was in juniors in 1981 or 82. What a beasting. They called it Langlauf. I called it running up hills with boards on yer feet. I remember sneaking out at night to go into town wearing tee shirt and Levi jacket in mid winter. The beer bar in camp was called 'The lonely hearts club'.

I remember the local disco in town. It was called 'Die Hexe'. I fell in love with Germany because of that experience and ended up spending ten years there all told. Great memories.

I vaguely remember doing a ski instructors course there in the '70s, sadly I don't recall very much else - apart from the fact that all the kit that they had was atrocious!

Summer 1981 I found myself on a potholing course at Silberhütte. I can still smell the wild garlic, common in limestone areas as taught in O-level Geography and confirmed by the instructor on Day 1 before a lesson in abseiling on the surface. There's wild garlic on one of my walks.

Every day down a different hole. One route was very tight. Third through, trying to catch up. Bang head. Realise I didn't hit the roof. Instructor had tapped safety hat with torch. He and first student were sat in the dark on a shelf above the pipe exit. I joined them. Behind me was a sapper who'd decided I was his best friend. He didn't get tapped, but carried on, getting increasingly frantic, thinking he was lost, calling after me. We bit fists so as not to laugh as one after another, the rest of the course tried to catch up, the sapper's calls echoing like something out of Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Last day, the deepest hole. Near the bottom, "You can follow the other instructor back to the surface by the easy route, or you can come down the hard route with me and sign the log book (in a Tupperware pot) at the bottom of the hardest bit. I volunteered. Nobody else did. Except, eventually, the sapper.

End of every pot, we'd wash our kit in the bitterly cold river, singing along to the then-current Adam Ant hit, Stand In The River. Every night, all the coveralls hung in a hot drying room.

Month or two later I got married (coincidentally in "Adam Ant kit", the Peacetime Uniform of 15/19H) and swans away adventure training largely became a thing of the past.

Love to know if the book was recovered and preserved.

Hi I was there around 1967-70 I was a ski instructor at BFPO 27 Silverhutte as a civilian ski instructor, there were 3 of us myself Allan Askings, Denny Fraser (Aviemore) and Sandy Joseph (Australia) great time there we were made honorary members of the Sargent’s mess.