Soltau Luneburg Training Area (SLTA)

Stephen Lock wrote:

I'm not even going to ask about Mercedes Mary...LOL...oh what the hell, why not???

So, only in Mercedes' or was she...uhm...available in the back of a VW as well? Did she supply her own Mercedes? No doubt after a couple of years of....er....entertaining the troops, she might well have been able to afford her own Mercedes!!

The Merc was usually no more than 2 years old. And she did not charge.A couple packs of Naffi Cigs would have sufficed.She had this thing about blokes in uniform. One night out of curiosity,honestly, I went on the main road outside of Rheinsalen Camp to see what was going on. Not a soul was about. This car then came down the long road leading to the camp,flashing its headlamps. For a while I thought that I was watching a movie on WWI,when I saw a number of uniformed men crawling out of the trenches on both sides of the road.

I was on a Div exercise at Rheinsalen Camp. The cookhouse was a little distance from the accommodation tents. When you collected your scoff you had to run like the clappers back to your tent chased by a horde of hawks.

I noticed that Mercedes Mary seemed to be doing most business with the REME?Was it her car that needed servicing?On the subject of accidents we lost 3 soldiers on the STA in one exercise in Daimler Armd Cars and Dingos one winter on those cobbled,cambered roads,the exercise was called off after the first two accidents,the third happened on the way back to the Regtl leaguer area,terribly sad to lose so many young lives in such a short time.
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Don

gallahad wrote:

The Merc was usually no more than 2 years old. And she did not charge.A couple packs of Naffi Cigs would have sufficed.She had this thing about blokes in uniform. One night out of curiosity,honestly, I went on the main road outside of Rheinsalen Camp to see what was going on. Not a soul was about. This car then came down the long road leading to the camp,flashing its headlamps. For a while I thought that I was watching a movie on WWI,when I saw a number of uniformed men crawling out of the trenches on both sides of the road.

So she did have her own Mercedes!! As I recalll, they did have rather roomy back seats!!!

I am somewhat familiar with the type (Mary, not the car, but those too!) -- girls who had "a thing" about soldiers...I suppose it paid off for both parties; the fellows got some...companionship....(okay, got laid!) and she got what she wanted. More power to her! I suppose if one has a fetish for guys in uniform, a garrison town is the place to be! What was that old disco tune....so many men, so little time? LOL

I had to chuckle at your story of being out along the road near Rheinsalen and seeing all the uniformed guys crawling out of the trenches in response to the flashing of her head lights....good lord, did they have to draw lots or line up or what? Or is that just Too Much Information to ask for LOL

Route 3 from Celle to Hanover had quite a few young ladies plying their trade by the side of the road,usually VW camper vans.
I only know this as my better half was in the BMH for a couple of months so I was up and down (not literaly) the road every day,honest.

The camper vans are still there as of 2 months ago!

Not to be prurient or anything or to appear to have an unhealthy interest in such matters, but when I was living in Soest as a teenager (16 and 17 years old) and heading off downtown I would sometimes go along the street immediately east of Hiddingser Weg towards the B-1, just for a change of route. There was a rather matronly woman, actually, who used to work the corner just "in" from the B-1, alongside the Belgian Kaserne on the south side of the B-1. Like many prostitutes of the era, she wore red and black (not sure if this was a licensing requirement, a sort of uniform, or what). I certainly would not say she was provocatively dressed. In fact, her usual outfit consisted of a red blazer, black skirt just above the knee, black stockings and her boots (sometimes heels, but again, not six inchers or anything). I'd put her age at 40, but she may well have been younger, although not by much....

It got to the point where she and I would exchange 'Guten Abends'. I never saw her getting dates, although there would be times when she would not be at her usual spot at her usual time,so I assume she was...on a date. Or maybe taking the evening off, I don't know.

Certainly I was aware of 'camp followers'....women who would take up positions outside the barracks gates and, as I recall hearing occurred down in Lahr, having an actual brothel -- although of course it was never blatantly so -- not even a kilometer outside the gates, along the main road.

Having mobile brothels such as the VW camper vans mentioned above strike me as....innovative. Quite entrepreneurial actually!

I remember, as mentioned several months ago in a thread entitled Down In The Valley, a reputed 'poufhaus' not far from the camps in Deilinghofen just before the Hoennetal turn-off to Menden (Menden to the left, Balve to the right), a quite large gasthaus, old, rather seedy looking.

Of course, the various discos I went to -- especially upon my return to Soest in '73 (by which time I was 20 and 21) -- had their share of girls who would, for a price of a drink or two (over priced, of course!) be VERY friendly with the boys in uniform (or in civvies, for that matter). Aware of them, sometimes chatted with them, but never fell for their wiles....I just wasn't interested in such individuals on that level.

And, again, we veer off course from the original thread! LOL

I had the dubious pleasure of assisting in the cleaning up of SLTA in the mid 90's after it had had years of abuse from squaddies prior to it being handed back to the Erics.
Plenty of old scrap metal, Don 10, and Green String and a few old rusty weapons.
Old Wolfgang continued to ply his trade around the Married Quarters of Fally for a year or so until he disappeared off the face of the earth. I never saw or heard of him after.
He still didn't have X country tyres for his van.

I don't remember a single 15/19H exercise fatality, but we lost a few to other causes.

We frequently heard that Germans had ploughed into the back of a Chieftain in the middle of the night on a dark country road.

Nearest I got was probably an FTX, 1979.

3 Armd Div was on the move as a whole toward a night Engineers' river crossing. Command Troop 15/19H found ourselves in the middle of the order of march behind a packet from an infantry battalion.

We stopped in the middle of a village. Not having been put in the picture I started to examine the inside of my eyeballs. Some time later the back door of Sultan Zero Bravo opened and the CO addressed me. "Corporal Alien, you can speak German. Get on that telephone (phone box a few feet away) and phone the Krankenhaus and tell them we have a soldier with severe head injuries."

It transpired that just around the corner, the route led off the road down a track. The packet in front of us was led by an infantry CSM in a Mark 1 Ferret. He told his driver to switch to convoy lights and carry on down the track.

A while later the driver became aware that his commander was very quiet. Then he found he was missing. He stopped and the packet pulled up behind him. It turned out that a low-hanging branch had collected the commander, lifted him out of the Ferret and dumped him on the track just in time for the lead 432 to bend his head.

Apparently the head was not a pretty site. He didn't last until morning.

Ian wrote:

Andrew wrote:

Like the avatar ciphers

I had the chance to settle in Canada in 1981, chose to go back to Germany. I've thought about that decision once or twice over the years, hey ho. Two of my mates married Canadian girls, one is happily married and (as far as I know) is still living in Medicine Hat, the other was posted to Germany with his Canadian wife who on arrival decided she didn't like Germany and went back home, on her own.

I'm sure exercise accidents were brushed under the carpet. On one exercise (on Soltau I think) we had a cook who was severely burnt when a cooker blew up in his face, another lad broke his back falling from the canopy of a knocker as he pulled on a cam net that suddenly gave way. The more I think about accidents the more I remember. I was obviously lucky.

Hello, I live in Suffield, if you would like some info about your mate that lives in Med hat let me know, regards, Ian.

I have a mate married a lass from MH and when Options For Change moved him along, he joined the South Alberta Light Horse. Toured Afghanistan a couple of years ago and retired last year. Don't need comms - we have a secure means.

;o)

Being based at 11 Ord I have to say I actually enjoyed Soltau well as a pad that is :-)

Do you remeber tat Tanks used to have a warning sign on the back "Vorsicht, shwenked aus" or something like that? I saw a VW totally wiped out when a Conqueror was turning off the road in Soltau.

nobby clark wrote:

Route 3 from Celle to Hanover had quite a few young ladies plying their trade by the side of the road,usually VW camper vans.
I only know this as my better half was in the BMH for a couple of months so I was up and down (not literaly) the road every day,honest.

I the 1970's/80's two of them were affectionately known as Lay-by Lil and Autobahn Annie. Someone on another forum said that one of the original " ladies " was murdered in the mid 1980's not exactly a safe profession!
As for Mercedes Mary I did hear about her but thought it was one of those Army myths a bit like the bus full of nurses from BMH ?????.
The wife was amazed that prostitution was legal in Germany. She wasn't shocked by it at all , coming from a port town , the ladies who "entertained"the visiting sailors were known as fairies( God only knows why)everybody knew who they were and nobody batted an eye at it.

Back on track.......Can't remember if it was Soltau or Haltern , one guy got run over by a Stolly. Broken pelvis , internal injuries . He was directing vehicles with a torch, fell over , torch landed on a rock and rocked back & forward........the Stolly kept coming........ouch!!!

The biggest and noisiest mosquitos that I've ever come across were at Soltau.

Around Soltau there are two villages, one is Heber and the other is Harber. Found out the hard way one Sunday morning while hitching back from Hamburg after missing the Bn bus in the wee hours of the morning. When I asked for directions to Heber, many did not seem to recognise it, and directed me to "Ach! Haber", on the otherside. Eventually a Bundespost guy gave me a lift on the back of his bike to Rheinsalen.

No one has mentioned Rheinsehlen Annie rumoured to have operated out of the bushes by the level crossing at the entrance to the camp in the latter half of the 1960s

Damned right about those mossies, they didn't half bite.

Reinsehlen Annie,
Now, in the mid-sixties we encountered two women working at Reinsehlen. I don't remember the other but one was called "Five Mark Monica".
Cheap, or what?

During one of our exercises on Soltau a live bomb was discovered, believed to be placed there by a local activist. On the net it was stressed this message is No Duff.

I recall a particular incident in the summer of 1953. Centurian tanks were out on the firing ranges testing a new gun stabalizer. Supposed to be secret.
Russian Military Mission ( 3 Officers driving big black Mercedes) were out and about trying to get a look see. The ranges were supposed to be out of bounds to the Mission. Got a message that the Ruskies had been ' caught' by one of the tankies, 7 Hussars I think, and could we toddle over and get them" the hell out of the area." Two of us, used our M/C's, 350 BSA.max speed about 45 mph and arrived at the spot to see a boody big Centurian with its gun pointing at the Merc. We politely asked the 3 Russians (back uniforms red bands around their hats, leather jackboots etc) if they would please follow us out of the restricted area. We all spoke a mixture of english and german but I am sure the message was clear. Off we went and after a couple of KM,s or so the Merc shot past us and disappeared in a cloud of dust. In no way could we keep up with the Merc. We suspected they would try to double back and attempt another look see. We spent about half an hour trying to find them when we had a bit of luck. A german farmer told us he had seen the Russian car go down a nearby track into a stand of trees. Off we went down the track into the trees and there lo and behold was the Merc with the 3 Russian officers,sitting in a row like three black crows across a fallen tree having a s**t. They were very polite and invited us to join them if we wished. Even offered us their black cigarettes. What could we do?. Two 18yr old L/Cpls ,and they were at least Colonels with all that red band. We saluted, mumbled someting about leaving the area when they were ready, and buggerd off ourselves.

Many memories of the training areas around Soltau. I was in No 6 Section 7th Armd Div Prost Company, based at the HQ of 7th Armd Bde.

Hi Arjeff and welcome mate.

Does anyone remember those "Prehistoric Graves" signs that were planted in the ground in the Luneberg training area? It was great sport to pull them up and replant them outside the tents of NCOs/WOs/Officers.

[quote="recce83"]Does anyone remember those "Prehistoric Graves" signs that were planted in the ground in the Luneberg training area? It was great sport to pull them up and replant them outside the tents of NCOs/WOs/Officers.[/quote



We used to do a similar thing with the old "Foul ground" signs !

I don't remember either of those?

Jim the sheltered life at Bde and higher protected you from such delights.
Bob