As a young man, I spent half a dozen years in Germany, a couple courtesy of the U.S. Army.
I’ve often fantasized about returning to towns where I lived, worked or played to double-check whether some of my memories of 50 years ago actually happened.
One of the difficulties is that today many — no, most — of the places I’d like to revisit don’t exist any more.
Here in Würzburg, east of Frankfurt, you can go to the Marienberg fortress, the Residenz palace, the cathedral or the Old Main Bridge and envision what life must have been like 500 years ago.
Finding tangible traces of the thousands of American military men and women who were part of this community for two generations after the end of WWII is more difficult. I decided to look at what’s become of Leighton Barracks, the largest U.S. base in the area, which was returned to the Germans in the early 2000s.
Why Leighton and Würzburg? Both the Americans who used to live here and the Germans who live here today seem happy to remember the past and chart the future on the Web.
Google virtually any German town that had an American military presence and you’ll find a social-media site with photos and stories that help keep memories alive. “Leighton Barracks Würzburg” on Facebook is a good example.
And in Würzburg, the Germans maintain a website about developments since the base was returned to them in 2008. Separately, a university student even asks in a web essay how memories of Leighton might be kept alive, as the American physical footprint disappears under bulldozer blades and cranes.
Troops and civilians in Germany working for the U.S. government lived on “little Americas” — islands of military bases that dotted the German map. Once there were about 400.
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the eastern and western parts of Germany reunited, more than 200 U.S. bases were closed and returned to the Germans. Now, according to official figures, about 40 U.S. bases remain nationwide for some 50,000 U.S. troops.
Leighton, once an airfield on a hill about two miles east of Würzburg center, was one of about a dozen U.S. bases in the area for some 10,000 troops. At 330 acres, it was one of the biggest U.S. military sites in Europe and became the center of “little America” in the region.
I found it difficult to find photos that show life on Leighton. Another former soldier reporter, JB Weilepp, who lived there at the time, noted that people don’t take many pictures when they don’t think anything special’s going on.
Army photographer Jim Stephens took the three top 1970s shots above. The bottom two are from the Leighton Facebook site.
Central bases featured houses, apartments, schools, department and grocery stores, theater, gym, bank, gas station, book store, chapel, sports fields and more. And everything was done in English.
The 3rd Infantry Division took its turn in Würzburg in the late 1950s and stayed for 40 years. The Third was the dominant U.S. military group in the region when I visited periodically in the 1970s.
Back in the 1970s, the American military was one of the 10 largest employers of Germans in Würzburg. Americans spent much of their pay in German shops and tourist destinations, bolstering the local economy.
Sharing the town’s centuries-old monuments, joint military exercises, festivals, base visits, concerts, German-American clubs and about 40 German-American marriages a year integrated Americans into the social and economic fabric of the city.
When Germans talk to me now, they like Americans. In serious moments, they say they appreciate the post-war steering back to democracy and the contribution the dollar made to the economy.
In the ‘70s, it was sometimes different. Attacks on U.S. installations cost millions in damages and sometimes U.S. soldiers’ lives. In the ‘80s, the peace movement objected to installation of U.S. medium-range nuclear missiles in Germany. Today, there probably is objection to drone assassinations from U.S. bases.
But in my experience, outside the towns that still have U.S. bases, the American presence barely registers with the Germans.
Today, most of Leighton Barracks is gone. Leighton has become the city’s Hubland (the name has roots in the 1700s) district.
Hubland is a meticulously planned, green, open and sustainable suburb that will boast nearly 2,000 apartments, including some subsidized, for about 4,500 people. It’s almost as big as the city center and supposed to be finished this year or next at a cost of about $140 million.
The former U.S. aircraft hangar with its characteristic quonset shape has become the local supply center.
The center contains a supermarket, bakery, clothes store, drugstore, bank, gym and ice cream parlor.
The former airfield tower now is a library and community meeting space. The former officers’ casino has been turned into a hotel and restaurant.
The former runway is a green strip that runs the length of the development, with a jogging/cycling path surrounding it. That’s the fortress in the distance. It was the highest point in the area, but Leighton lay at about the same height.
When “Leighton” was still a German airfield, a zeppelin landed on the runway. On the former runway today, a piece of Zeppelin art points its nose toward the former airfield tower.
Some of the “American” buildings, which often had been German until the end of WWII, could be repurposed. But much more often, it was simply too expensive to renovate them. They were torn down, and the Germans started over.
It looks square, but it’s forward-looking. A nucleus of the new district is “the Cube,” a center for start-ups, workshops, co-working and meetings.
In most of towns I’ve revisited, the Germans took 20-30 years to start rebuilding on the returned bases. The country has a terrible housing shortage, and every reconstruction plan I know of emphasizes housing. Würzburg seems to have moved fairly quickly.
Some American school buildings, used by thousands of students at a time, have been retained as part of a university campus, but most buildings are gone. The university received about one-third of the land returned.
The high school took me by surprise.
I didn’t realize where I was until I saw the display right inside an entrance. Now it’s used by the university’s philosophy faculty.
The former U.S. elementary school is still there, but German planners no doubt have something in mind for it.
The 14 former U.S. apartment buildings still stand on Skyline Hill, now as part of the Hubland Nord campus of Würzburg University.
That direction sign above points to student housing. This is the one I found in the area.
My guess is not a lot has changed in the residence buildings since they were occupied by Americans.
Americans loved to grill, and between buildings, their concrete-and-cover still stands.
Information panels point out where former U.S. installations stood. This one points out the former American theater.
Four bus lines connect Hubland to the city center. A tram line to Hubland has been repeatedly postponed and now is scheduled to come on line in about 2029.
“Leighton Street” juts out into the area of the former U.S. base, but many other streets have been renamed from American presidents to key Würzburg citizens (Leighton was named for an American officer killed in France in 1944).
The old curving main gate (left) to the base has been preserved. Today, its outline (right) is an entrance to Hubland and a reminder for those who wish to remember.
Coda
My job as a reporter meant checking in with the Third’s public affairs office (PAO), which was staffed by more able reporters, editors and photographers than in many other units, including mine.
Army photographer Jim Stephens snapped the photo (above left) of the front of what the Americans called the “River Building,” where the PAO was located. It doesn’t look much different today (photo right).
A sign outside the River Building says the main tenant is the North Bavarian Autobahn (highway).
After hours, the PAO staff often would go to “Luigi’s,” an Italian restaurant nearby. Sometimes, I’d get to go along.
My waiter, the fellow on the phone, said yes, it’s the same Luigi’s, although the whole name might be a little different. He said his father and uncle had run the restaurant.
That’s the current Luigi behind the counter. He said the Luigi we knew went back to Italy in the 1970s and died about 10 years later.
Pizza Maria became Pizza Mary — or vice versa. Still good.
The waiter said the painting still on the wall remembers all of us.
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On the Würzburg Facebook site, a German wrote: “Leighton Barracks you should forget the American army because the area … has changed so tremendous(ly) that even the visitors don’t know where they are….”
On her website about remembering the base, the university student wrote in huge letters:
“No matter how much is torn down, the top of that hill will always be Leighton Barracks.”
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