Ordnance Corps
ORDNANCE SUPPORT UNIT
SHORT, TALL STORIES
Air Defense Artillery
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Ordnance Corps |
NIKE AJAX AND HERCULES ORDNANCE SUPPORT UNIT SHORT, TALL STORIES |
Air Defense Artillery |
Submitted by: Glen Bohusch, Sp5
E-Mail woodsew@yahoo.com
I enjoyed very much going through the site on the support units in Germany and the other related pages. I was in the 227th Ordnance Detachment, which was a General Support, unit. The 227th was formed at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL in 1961 as a General Support unit for the NIKE system. Most of the E4s and lower enlisted men came from the, then graduating, classes in the various technical specialties related to the NIKE systems. My MOS was 433.1 and our class in mechanical and hydraulic repair graduated on October 13th, 1961. The officers, NCOs, and higher-ranking Specs came from other units. 1st Lt. David W. LeJeune commanded the 227th during the entire time I was in the unit. We trained at Redstone as a unit then, as a unit, left for Germany on the USNS Rose in January of 1962.
At that time, as far as I know, the 227th was the only NIKE GS unit in Europe. We were stationed at Camp Pieri outside of Wiesbaden and occupied the third floor of a barracks housing the 579th Ordnance Company commanded by Capt. Marion T. Heeke. The 227th was a completely mobile unit - all of our equipment was mounted in trucks and we always moved all of the equipment out of the garage area on the typical monthly alerts. Both summers ('62 and '63) that I was there, we spent two weeks out in the field somewhere in the Darmstadt area. When we first got there, the 227th was assigned to the 100th Ordnance Battalion. Some time in 1963, the 227th was attached to the 579th Ordnance Company and, thereby, became part of the 19th Ordnance Battalion
My tour of duty was up in May of 1964 and, on the 10th of the month, I left for home from Bremerhaven on the USNS Darby. I don't have any further information on what happened to the unit in later reorganizations. If you have any information, I would be interested in hearing from you or from others.
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Hello Doyle,
I have a little more information on the history of the 227th Ordnance Detachment
that you may want to include on your website. I received a message from Bill
McCormick who had served with the 227th Ordnance Detachment in 1968. It
appears that sometime between May 1964 (when I left) and May 1968 (when Bill
joined the unit), the 227th left Camp Pieri in Wiesbaden, Germany and relocated
back to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. In the process, its mission changed
from that of a Nike System general support unit to that of a conventional
ammunition renovation unit. Bill wrote that the
227th was really just a holding unit for people transferring to Vietnam and
those coming back and that they never saw any live ammunition in the time that
he was there. Bill served with the 227th until September of 1968 when he
left for duty in Vietnam. The unit was still active in 1969.
Glen Bohusch
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This from Mike Baye concerning Camp Pieri:
I was with the United States Air Force at Camp Pieri. I lived in three of the four barracks located on the base. The last barracks was the one that you mentioned. It had buildings behind it that were off limits and had been used (according to rumor) for missile guidance and repair work. I was at Pieri from Aug. 65-June 68. The missile group probably left sometime in 65/66. Our group was Det 2, 6910th Security Wing and we used the building behind the canteen/snack bar for our opperations. An Army light maintenance group lived in the first barracks on the right as you came into Pieri. The Air Force used two other barracks and civilian workers lived in another when I left in June of 68.