On September 28 and 29, ten former members of the 11th Airborne Division, some of them with family members, visited Augsburg, their former garrison city. From 1956 to 1958, paratroopers of the 187th, 188th and 505th/511th Airborne Infantry Regiments were stationed in Gablingen and in Sheridan Kaserne. Division’s Headquarters were in Flak Kaserne. Training took place in Gablingen, flights for the parachute descents took off from the airfields Fürstenfeldbruck and Neubiberg near Munich.
In the presence of CPT Monika Stoy, chair(wo)man of Outpost Europe, Society of the 3rd Infantry Division, Ordnungsreferent Mr. Walter Böhm in the evening of September 28 officially welcomed the veterans of the once ”notorious” Angels unit, who called itself “The Shield of Bavaria” at the time of the Cold War nuclear tensions. After a speech outlining the democratic development of the Federal Republic of Germany, the City invited the guests to a Bavarian dinner in the Town Hall’s “Ratskeller”. One of the old soldiers had been only 16 years of age, when he, far away from his homeland, learned to know Augsburg in the years of reconstruction.
On the following day, the former paratroopers made a roundtrip thru the Augsburg and Gablingen Kaserne areas. Finally, the Amerika in Augsburg e.V. Society invited the guests to a coffee hour in Sheridan Kaserne, highlighted by sweet smelling “Augsburger Zwetschgendatschi” (damson pie).
