My Forgotten Winter Journey from Spich to Soest – C-Company, 1CY, Winter

[Jan]

In the late 1980s, I served as a conscript with the 1st Cyclist Regiment (1CY) at Knesselaere Barracks in Spich, near Cologne. I was part of C-Company. What started as a routine rotation turned into one of the strangest and harshest episodes of my military service.

I had just been discharged from the psychiatric hospital in Cologne when the trucks pulled up on the parade ground in Spich. Still half disoriented from my stay, I arrived at the barracks. The convoy was already running. A higher-ranking soldier pointed me to a truck. Without hesitation, I threw my entire kit: backpack, sleeping bag, everything, into the vehicle he indicated.

Less than a minute later, that truck drove off. With all my gear. Heading to Soest.

I stood there. Without my sleeping bag. Without my backpack. In the bitter cold.

It was more than ten degrees below zero. I climbed as the last man into the truck carrying the other conscripts from C-Company. The back was packed. Everyone huddled together for warmth. But no one wanted to share even a bit of space or cover with me. I sat alone, ice-wind surrounding me.

The journey lasted fourteen hours. Fourteen hours in that icy, swaying darkness.

Upon arrival at the American base in Soest (Germany), I was immediately pulled aside. An army doctor examined me and saw right away how bad my condition was. He ordered without discussion: three days of bed rest. With a pile of blankets. I lay there, slowly thawing out, while the rest of the company started their guard duty, the security mission we had come for, with the rumours of nuclear weapons and sensitive NATO materiel in the background.

That trip remains with me as a symbol of how tough and at the same time how absurd military service could be. Straight from the Cologne psychiatric ward into the freezing cold, without equipment, without any compassion from the group, and yet eventually looked after by the system.

Jan
1st Cyclist Regiment Spich

Winter 1988-1989 (??)

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