Storied U.S. barracks closes

HEIDELBERG, Germany — For Germans and Americans here who had long imagined a dramatic coda to their cold war bond, it came instead in a few solemn, quiet moments.

After both national anthems were played, seven American and five German soldiers lowered their national colors, marched at the edge of a bedraggled parade ground and carefully folded the flags for the last time.

The ceremony Friday afternoon, before about 300 onlookers, marked the closing of Campbell Barracks, which, as the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe, issued the orders for the millions of U.S. soldiers — 15 million in Germany alone — who have served on the Continent since 1945. It was a day that most present, mostly an older crowd, had never imagined could come.

“We had no idea that Heidelberg will ever close,” said Regina Hingtgen, 62, who has worked with the Army for 41 years, and first honed her English when her parents billeted GIs. The Army was the best employer, she said, affording her, among much else, a flexibility as a divorced single mother that “no German company would ever have done,” she said.

The day was bittersweet, the current commander, Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr. — no relation to the World War II staff sergeant after whom the barracks was named — said. After the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union, then the absorption of new NATO members and alliance commands at the base, followed by almost 10 years of preparation and a dwindling military presence, power was passing forever from Heidelberg.