There’s the Corlette Circle and the Marshall Heights, Lincoln Housing and New York Town Village — little bits of middle America that have put down roots in southern Germany. The diners, baseball diamonds, shopping malls and station wagon car-dealerships have been here in northern Bavaria as long as anyone can remember.
For miles around, every small town and village is home to dozens of American soldiers, their partners and children — who board 60 buses every morning to go to their American-style schools on the sprawling military encampment occupying 128ha of prime land in the centre of this town of 130 000.
”The Americans and the Germans just grew up together here,” said Ole Kruse, a Würzburg city official. ”It’s a very long tradition. The Americans are just part of this place.”
But not for much longer. Under the Pentagon’s plans to reconfigure the US military’s ”global posture”, the days of the GIs in Germany are numbered. Würz-burg and a string of nearby towns, home to the 13 000-strong 1st Infantry Division, will be hardest hit.
The division is halfway through a 12-month deployment in Iraq, in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. Many of the station wagons and SUVs that clog the streets of Würzburg have yellow ribbons on their bonnets, testament to the presence of loved ones in Iraq. At the large US military hospital, the Stars and Stripes is permanently at half mast to mourn the dead.
Würzburg is also in mourning of sorts. ”We’re talking to the Americans about the what, where, when and how,” said Kruse. ”Will it be a full or partial pullout? The Americans still have not said what is happening to us.”
The fear here is that the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division will return from Iraq merely to pack up and go back to Kansas, leaving behind a lot of local unemployment, a collapsed property market, a hole in the regional economy and increased transatlantic estrangement between the two countries.
”This could be a big strategic disaster,” said Thomas Leuerer, a Würzburg academic who has spent years studying the post-second world war US military communities in Germany.
”The 1st Infantry and the 1st Armoured [based at Wiesbaden] are the last two heavy US divisions in Europe,” he said. ”Their departure could wreck Nato. They give a feeling of security here. People think that as long as they are here, the Americans will fight for us and with us.”
But the US has other wars to fight, and Europe is receding as a focus. Half the 400 American military facilities in Europe are to be mothballed, and about half the troops recalled. Germany, where 75% of the total number of troops in Europe are stationed, is the main target of the cuts. The soldiers bring with them 100 000 family members and dependents. The impact of their departure on small-town Germany will be immense.
In Kitzingen, east of Würzburg, there have been times in recent years when the American population equalled the German one. In Baumholder, to the west, there are three Americans for every German. In Schweinfurt, to the north, the departure of thousands of people will have a severe effect on a depressed economy.
The Americans invest about â,¬40-million in the region every year, and spend much more. The Verdi trade union believes the pullout will cost 80 000 German jobs in a country with stubbornly high unemployment of 4,5-million.
American troops have been in Würzburg for two generations, continuously since 1946, part of the contingent stationed in Germany since the end of World War II. And very early on, the top brass decided that the best way to maintain order and morale was to send the families, too.
That practice produced thriving communities. At the sprawling Leighton barracks in Würzburg, headquarters to the 1st Infantry, the yellow-jerseyed teenagers of the Würzburg Wolves American football squad are being put through their paces as their parents take their trolleys through the vast shopping mall and food hall. Subsidised by the Pentagon and trading in dollars, it is the biggest American shopping mall in Europe, a magnet for US families from all over southern Germany.
”It’s nice to have a bit of home when you are away from home,” said Sergeant Rebecca Sharpton, from the Midwest.
Under the new plans these big bases are to be replaced by ”bare bones” facilities scattered from eastern Europe to the far east. In future, US troops stationed overseas will leave their families behind.
”It will tear apart the lives of the soldiers,” said Jim Wagner, a car salesman from Florida who has been in Würzburg for seven years, doing brisk business from his showroom outside the US headquarters. ”It’s a quality of life thing. You’ll lose a lot of good people. As long as they are here, I can make a living. I can go anywhere the troops are. But I love Germany.”
As do many of the American troops. In Würzburg around 40 Americans marry Germans every year, and hundreds of retired troops have opted to stay.
If a decade ago the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, paid the Kremlin billions to get the Russian army out of eastern Germany, the Germans would now happily pay the Americans to stay. But the decisions have been taken in Washington.
”Some think it’s a punishment for us for being against the Iraq war,” said Kruse. ”But most think it’s just America restructuring its forces. You can’t ask the Americans to stay forever. They’ve done their job.” – Guardian Unlimited Â