GERMANY DENIES ASYLUM TO AMERICAN DESERTER

Remember THIS guy?

April 05, 2011 Agence France-Presse

Germany has denied asylum to Andre Shepherd, a former US Soldier who deserted his unit in Iraq citing opposition to the war, a spokesman for the federal office for migration and refugees said on Tuesday.

"The asylum claim was rejected because there is no evidence to suggest that the asylum seeker could have been involved in war crimes or other crimes during another posting to Iraq," the office said in a statement.

"He could not cite any concrete crimes his unit committed during his first tour. In addition, as a helicopter mechanic, he was not in danger of becoming involved in fighting and therefore in possible crimes," added the office.

Shepherd, 33, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, walked off his base in southern Germany in 2007 and spent 19 months on the run before applying for asylum.

Before then, he had completed a five-month stint in Iraq between September 2004 and February 2005 where he serviced Apache helicopters as part of the 412th Aviation Support Battalion.

When ordered back to Iraq, he felt he could not continue to take part in what he said was a "completely illegal war" and became the first US Soldier to claim asylum in Germany.

His lawyer, Reinhard Marx, said his client would likely contest the decision but that a forced return to the United States was "out of the question."

"He has married a woman with German nationality, so he has a residence permit. This is about whether the German authorities accept his status as a refugee," Marx told AFP.


This is a good first step - too bad it took two years. Now, for our laws and our oaths of military obligation to have any meaning whatsoever, Andre Shepard must be tried for desertion during wartime. American forces defended Germany for over fifty years - we stared down the Soviet Red Army at Checkpoint Charlie, we did the Berlin Airlift, and we called out the Communists at the Wall, provided moral support and more, until at last that wall came down and Germany was unified once more - and all the while Germany's economy benefited from not having to maintain a huge defense budget. The least Germany can do now is to extradite this piece of excrement so he can face the consequences of his actions. Otherwise, NATO is a joke and Germany will share the same shameful status as Canada during the Vietnam conflict - refuge for deserters.

- SEAN LINNANE SENDS

"Footprint of the American Chicken"

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WHAT ARE THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE?

One day in the pavilion at Karakorum the great Genghis Khan asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness.




"The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you," responded the officer after a little thought, "and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares."

"Nay," responded the Kahn, "The greatest things in life are to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet - to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best."





There is a recent movie on Genghis Khan, "MONGOL" (2007) or монгол, a Russian movie filmed in Kazakstan, Russia, and Germany.




Genghis Khan is played by the Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano. The rest of the cast actors are Chinese, Mongolians, one Kazak and Atlay. Extras were all played by Kazaks.






Mongol was directed by Sergei Bodrov. It is the epic tale of how a young boy ascended to become Genghis Khan. Mongol reaches Shakespearean heights in its narrative account of a family that is torn apart, cast aside, and eventually restored to power. A young boy tests his courage against forces determined to destroy him and, through sheer force of will, wins out.

Nine-year-old Temudgin sets off with his father, a khan, to search for a bride. Travelling across the region’s stark and beautiful tundra, Temudgin sees a girl whom he proclaims to be his wife, though his choice runs counter to his father’s wishes. But Temudgin’s life instantly changes when a group of Tartars poison his father. Even though he is next in line to rule, the rest of the tribe refuses to accept leadership from a young boy. They cast out his entire family, forcing them to eke out a meagre existence.




An epic of courage and resourcefulness follows, as the boy becomes a man, finds the girl whom he had chosen as his bride all those years ago, and gradually reasserts his claim to the leadership of his kingdom. Temudgin’s picaresque journey sees him descend to the depths of slavery before exacting his revenge and reascending to the heights of power he knew as a young boy. This saga plays out against the stunning landscapes of Central Asia, where tribal loyalties rule and violent warfare trumps other means of resolving differences.

The grand canvas of the storyline clearly stimulates Bodrov, and he relishes the visual opportunities afforded in the scenes of realistic warfare. But he also finds ample time for the quiet moments between Temudgin, his wife and his beloved mother. Family forms the bedrock of behaviour, and Bodrov constantly returns to this idea in re-imagining a vital period of Mongol history.


Scenes from the movie:













"Malım – janımnıñ sadağası, Janım – arımnıñ sadağası"

"Sacrifice your riches for your life, Sacrifice your life for your honor"


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PRISONER of WAR ROLEX's PART 3

This is the final installment of the Story of the Prisoner of War Rolex's.



Clive Nutting’s Luft Stalag POW III Watch” - Lot# 311


A Treasure of Unpublished POW Momentoes



During his five-year captivity, Clive “Nobby” Nutting kept a war log filled with drawings, cartoons and photographs depicting life in World War II’s most famous prisoner-of-war camp, Luft Stalag III — scene of the Great Escape.

He starts his scrapbook book with a colored drawing that sums up his time in action prior to his capture on March 28, 1940, south of Dunkirk. It shows him clinging desperately to a damaged telegraph pole, trying to establish communications as bombs and shells rain down on a battle-torn landscape. A “Stuka” dive-bomber hovers menacingly overhead.





Nutting had joined the Royal Corps of Signals — the army’s communications engineers — in 1935, as a part-time soldier in the reservist Territorial Army.

By April 1940, Corporal Nutting was in France with the 44th Territorial division, part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) guarding the border with Belgium. On March 10, the Germans attacked, splitting the French armies, encircling the BEF, and forcing it in a tighter pocket around Dunkirk — the only port of evacuation.

On March 28, the Germans overwhelmed Nutting’s rearguard position near Cassel, a strategic communications centre. That night, the remnants of his 44th division managed to slip away. Some were among the 340,000 British and French troops evacuated from Dunkirk.

A series of official letters evokes the agony that Clive Nutting’s parents must have felt when they discovered their son hadn’t got back from Dunkirk. First he’s posted missing, and it’s not until September 12, 1940 that they know he’s a prisoner-of-war.
We next see Nutting in a press photograph published in an American men’s magazine.

He’s a haggard and exhausted prisoner on a cold, hungry march through Belgium and Germany to captivity. German soldiers hold their rifles at the ready. A contemporary handwritten account among his mementoes speaks of potato fields being stripped bare as the prisoners march over them, and of POWs being machine-gunned as they steal milk from a cow.





From June to September 1940, Nutting is incarcerated at Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf. Then he’s moved to Stalag Luft I at Bart on the Baltic, where he stays until 1942. He spent from 1942 to 1945 at Stalag Luft III in Upper Silesia, where he was the camp shoemaker. At the end of January, he was evacuated ahead of the advancing Russians across Germany to Westertimke on the North Sea, and spent the remaining few weeks of his captivity at the Milag Nord camp for captured merchant seamen.

The drawings and watercolours of camp life are typical of the British serviceman’s humour-in-adversity: we see Nutting distilling 100-octane hooch from marmalade, or wondering whether to make potato substitute from bread or bread substitute from potatoes. One accomplished artist contributed a cartoon of a young man hurrying upstairs, a packet of ice-cream in one hand and dragging a scantily clad lady in the other, and urging: “Hurry darling! Before it gets soft!” But there’s also a grimly detailed pencil drawing of a camp watchtower, and series of watercolours of the forced march out of Luft Stalag III in midwinter 1945. First the POWs struggle through snow dragging a sled. Then the snow melts and they have to carry their loads. A dramatic drawing records an attack by a RAF Mosquito aircraft on February 22, 1945.

Apart from the unpublished collection of POW art, there are a number of photographs with Nutting and his fellow POWs behind barbed wire, standing next to their huts or at work mending shoes. Nutting was in a way better off than many POWs. His job as cobbler kept him occupied. In wartime, your boots are your best friends, gold to the prisoners and their guards alike. He was undoubtedly popular, judging from the contributions to his scrapbook, and his evident sense of humor — natural in a Londoner — would have helped keep up the morale.


The Great Escape — A Game Turned to Tragedy


Of all Clive Nutting’s mementoes of prisoner-of-war life, none is more poignant than an illustrated poem depicting the tragic escape from Luft Stalag III in March 1944.
The verse was penned by an Australian airman when the camp learned that the Nazis had murdered 50 of the escapers. Accompanied by a detailed drawing of the tunnel beneath the camp, it expresses the outrage and defiance of the POWs in typical Aussie style.





“…Fifty fine fellows
With good stout intentions
Trusting no doubt in the Geneva Conventions
Reckoning not with he mind of the Hun
Fifty fine fellows — and now there are none.
“Will we forget — or pardon this? Might we?
I’ll wager a bet — ‘Not bloody likely!’”


What became known as the Great Escape was an ambitious plot launched in early 1943 to get up to 250 POWs out of Stalag Luft III through tunnels beneath the wire. The mass breakout was designed to tie up as much of the German resources as possible in hunting the escapers.

Masterminded by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a South African, it quickly grew to a massive undertaking, employing more than 500 of the camp’s artisans in the production of escape equipment — civilian clothes, German uniforms, compasses, rations and hundreds of forged documents and maps.

The escape organisation built, stole or extorted tools, ventilation and lighting equipment for the tunnel engineers. The operation, under the noses of the Germans, required elaborate security and a constant monitoring of guards and patrols.
As a shoemaker with well-equipped workshops at his disposal, a specialist in signals and an experienced “Kriegie” (POW), Nutting was part of the escape organisation from the start, making civilian belts, shoes and briefcases for the escapers out of leather stolen from his German clients.

Nutting had already been involved in the ingenious “Wooden Horse” escape from Luft Stalag III in the summer of 1943. The POWs had started a tunnel from beneath a vaulting horse built out of Red Cross cases. Every day they carried the horse, with a man hidden inside it to the same spot in the prison compound near the perimeter wire. While the prisoners vaulted, the man inside dug the tunnel. Nutting was one of the “penguins” who dispersed the earth dug out of the tunnel by dropping it out of bags inside his trousers. The three escapers — F/Lt Eric Williams (who wrote a book about the escape), Lt Michael Codner and F/Lt Oliver Philpot got home via Sweden.
After the war, Nutting acted as consultant for both the 1950 Wooden Horse movie and the Great Escape of 1963.





The Wooden Horse (1950)
Cast: Leo Genn ; David Tomlinson ; Anthony Steel ; David Greene ; Peter Burton.




The Great Escape (1963)
Cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald,
Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, and James Coburn.

The real Great Escape started with the launch of three tunnels, “Tom”, “Dick” and “Harry,” each starting in a barrack hut, through the concrete foundations of the stove or shower because the huts themselves were elevated on stilts. “Tom” was discovered, and “Dick,” abandoned and used for hiding escape kits. All energies were concentrated on “Harry,” dug 10 metres deep to avoid German tunnelling detectors and more than 100 metres long to come out in the pine forest beyond the wire.

The breakout through Harry was scheduled for the moonless night of March 24, 1944. It started with the disappointment at seeing the tunnel emerge well short of the pine forest in an open snow-covered area patrolled by German sentries. Having to wait for the sentries to pass, a power blackout and tunnel collapses slowed the throughput to barely a dozen men an hour instead of the planned one a minute.
By dawn 76 POWs had got out. The next man emerged from the tunnel under the feet of the sentry.

All but three of the 76 were recaptured. Hitler was so furious at the breakout that he ordered them all shot. Eventually, Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and responsible for the prisoners, persuaded him to limit the number to more than half. Thus 50 prisoners of war were handed over to the Gestapo and killed.
For the British, this had started out as a game, as the verse commemorating the tragedy makes clear:

“Bloody fine fellows
To prove this was done
Set out for freedom,
And thought it was fun.”


That the Germans should not play the game by the rules — in this case the Geneva Conventions — was deeply shocking to the British, who made great efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice after the war. The Royal Air Force Special Branch managed to track down 18 of the murderers: 14 were sentenced to death and one escaped the gallows by committing suicide.

The killing of the recaptured POWs was embarrassing to the Luftwaffe, which had meticulously respected the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of their British prisoners, mindful of the fact that many of their downed airmen were in British camps. As a gesture, the Luftwaffe allowed the Stalag Luft III POWs to build a memorial to their murdered comrades.

Nutting’s scrapbook contains a sensitively drawn post-card of the fine memorial to the 50 airmen, which still stands at the camp site, now in Zagan, part of Poland.

- Alan Downing

PRISONER of WAR ROLEX's

PART 2




A Wonderful Story


A 1940s Rolex chronograph that belonged to a British prisoner of war at Luft Stalag III camp in Nazi Germany came up for auction sale in Geneva in May, 2007. With it is the logbook Corporal Clive Nutting of the Royal Corps of Signals kept during his wartime captivity. It’s a collection of unpublished cartoons, illustrations and photographs revealing a new insight into camp life and the mass breakout of 76 POWs made famous in the movie, The Great Escape.



Included in the papers is Nutting’s correspondence with Rolex, confirming the remarkable marketing campaign the Geneva brand launched during World War II.


A Captive Market

Swiss watch sales were badly hit by the war, especially after Germany invaded unoccupied Vichy France in November 1942, and neutral Switzerland found itself completely encircled by Axis powers. Watch companies were cut off from their best customers, the British and Americans.

Rolex, however, discovered that there were plenty of British and Americans right on Switzerland’s doorstep — literally a captive market — in German prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag Luft III, for example, housed up to 10,000 Allied airmen, shot down in operations over occupied Europe. Thousands more Allied officers were interned in the various Oflag (officer’s POW camps) scattered throughout the German Reich.



Clive Nutting (at right) with his “Brothers in Arm” in Stalag Luft III


This was evidently a booming market, judging from Rolex’s confirmation of an order for one of its more expensive watches received from prisoner No. 738 in Stalag Luft III. Hans Wilsdorf, founding director of Rolex who took personal charge of sales to POWs, warned Clive Nutting of “an unavoidable delay in the execution of your order.” The delay was due, not to wartime restrictions, “but to a large number of orders in hand for officers.”


Rolex’s Incredible Offer

The large number of orders is explained by the incredible offer Rolex was making to POWs. Underlined in Wilsdorf’s letter to Nutting are the words, “…but you must not even think of settlement during the war.” The news that Rolex was offering watches on the “pay-on-the-never-never” plan spread through the camps like wildfire. More than 3,000 Rolex watches were reportedly ordered by British officers in the Oflag VII B POW camp in Bavaria alone.





Wilsdorf, himself a German, was betting on an Allied victory. By early 1943 this was a risk worth taking; the tide of war had turned. The Russians were on the offensive after routing the Germans at Stalingrad; German and Italian armies were being driven out of North Africa. This expression of trust must have been a wonderful morale-booster for the POWs. Besides being a comfort in a POW camp, watches were part of an airman’s kit, and many had lost theirs on capture or in trying to avoid it. As a signaller, Clive Nutting would also have been issued a watch as part of his equipment. For escape-minded prisoners who could only get to the borders by public transport, a watch was as essential as a train timetable.

Wilsdorf further hedged his bet by making this offer available to British officers only, in the belief that their word was their bond. He had started his watch business in England, but moved to Switzerland after World War I for tax reasons. He was also impressed by the fact that Rolex watches were popular among British Royal Air Force pilots. He also extended the offer to NCOs like Clive Nutting, who though not an officer nor even in the air force, was gentleman enough to order a 250-franc Rolex 3525 Oyster chronograph. Most other POWs ordered the much cheaper Speed King model, popular for its small size.

Nutting’s Oyster chronograph No. 122, ordered on March 10, 1943, was eventually sent on July 10 with a gratis invoice, certificate and instructions, and it was on Nutting’s wrist by August 4. As a chronograph, it could well have been used in timing the patrols of the goons (prison guards) or the despatch of 76 escapees though tunnel “Harry” in the mass breakout of March 24-25, 1944.




A Valuable Craftsman

Nutting was among a few army personnel quartered in the North camp of Stalag Luft III. A shoemaker by trade, he was valuable both to the Germans and to the POWs. He had a privileged position in charge of the camp’s shoemaking workshop, received a wage from the Germans, sent remittances to his family in England, and as an officer’s promissory note testifies, had money to lend. He could evidently afford a special watch.



Clive Nutting (at right) with his friends in the workshop



The next we hear of the watch is on Nutting’s return to his home in Acton, London, in August 1945 when he writes to Wilsdorf that although his watch served well in the cold weather during the evacuation of the camps, it was now gaining an hour a day. Where can he have it fixed? And can he have the final invoice?

Due to British currency restrictions, Rolex could only send Nutting the invoice of £15 12s 6d for his watch in 1948. The chronograph stayed with him until his death in Australia in 2001 at the age of 90.

The last record of Nutting’s POW watch is a restorer’s bill for $2,356 (Australian dollars), dated March 28, 2003 — exactly 63 years after its original owner became a prisoner of war.




The restorer’s bill dated March 28, 2003




To Be Continued . . .


. . . S.L.

PRISONER of WAR ROLEX's

STORMBRINGER Presents:

The fascinating story of how Rolex was engaged in the regular supply of watches to men incarcerated in German Prisoner of War camps during World War II.




(Part I)

The "Prisoner of War" watches from Rolex
©Write Time Partners V, 2000

The story of the Rolex “Prisoner of War” watches is a fascinating one, but a story that has become almost a legend in its retelling . . .

First, the legend: If you were an Allied Prisoner of War captured by the Germans during World War II, you could write to Rolex, Geneva and they would send you a watch FREE OF CHARGE.

The reality is only a little different: this service was only available for British prisoners and not for French, American or other Allies. The letter would be sent to Rolex from the camp via the International Red Cross, who (like Rolex) was headquartered in Geneva. Hans Wilsdorf himself, who wrote a letter that accompanied every watch dispatched to a P.O.W, ran the administration of this program.


(NOTE: Hans Wilsdorf was the founder and lifetime owner of the Rolex Company - S.L.)


As stated in the first letter, the recipients were expected to pay for their watches in Swiss Francs at the end of the war. However due to economic situation at the end of the war, it was often 1947 or 1948 before foreign exchange resources were available to meet the bills.

The first letter is to a senior officer in the RAF, who was a guest of the German Air Force. This was because one of the stranger German habits during WWII was that each service ran its own prison camps “catering” to prisoners from the opposing service. This can be gained from the address “Stalag Luft 3”, Stalag, meaning “prisoner of war camp” and Luft being short for “Luftwaffe” or Air Force.




The interesting thing about the letter (other than the fact that Hans Wilsdorf wrote it himself) is what was included with the watch, as listed at the bottom of the page. There was an invoice, the instruction book and the guarantee card but also included was the official chronometer-rating certificate. I suppose as Wing Commander Trumble would have some time on his hands, at least he could now measure it accurately.

The camp Stalag Luft 3 may mean nothing to most of you but if you have ever read the book by Paul Brickhill or the movie (roughly based on it) both called “The Great Escape”; you will know something of it.

The second letter is the most interesting; as it is a personal letter from Hans Wilsdorf to the parents of a British Officer taken prisoner, most likely during the fall of France. Note what Wilsdorf says in the letter “We are looking after his wants in the same way as for some other British Officers, who are also prisoners in the same camp. Please rest assured that we will do everything in our power to obtain food or other articles . . .”





There are a number of questions about this letter. Why is Wilsdorf writing to the family with this important information? Isn’t this the job of the Red Cross? He also offers the firm’s services as a communication conduit, once again normally the job of the Red Cross.

I have no proof for it but my gut feeling tells me that the subject of the letter “Grahame” may well have been a Rolex employee before the war. And, as he is an officer (note that he is in an “Oflag” or Officer’s camp) was most probably of managerial status and would then have known Wilsdorf. This may also explains why Wilsdorf always calls Grahame, not Captain Smith (or whatever his name may have been). Lending further credence to my theory is the fact that almost every POW Rolex I have seen was a boy’s size Speedking. However the watch that was sent to Grahame was a reference 3525 Oyster chronograph, one of the most expensive watches in the Rolex catalogue at that time.

Note Wilsdorf’s PS is in his handwriting and is further evidence of a personal relationship between Wilsdorf & Grahame.

The reason the British Prisoners of War needed a new watch was that most of them would have had their own (or government issue) wristwatches confiscated when they were captured. Whilst some of this was simple looting, the main reason the Germans did this was that they knew that RAF officers were normally given escape & evasion kits by the RAF. Examples of this were needles in sewing kits which were magnetized to act as compass needles and maps printed on silk concealed in the heel of a flying boot. There was even a special section of British Military Intelligence (MI9), specially dedicated to getting escaped prisoners & downed aircrew back to the UK. The logic behind all this was that every escaped prisoner tied down hundreds of German troops and police drawing them from offensive operations against the allies.


To Be Continued . . .



. . . S.L.

THE AMERICAN ARMY

"The reason why it is so difficult to fight the American Army is because they never follow their own doctrine."
- A Russian General





"War is Chaos, and the reason why the American Army excels at War is because they practice Chaos on a daily basis."
- a German General

FLAK TOWERS ! ! !

Flak towers (German: Flaktürme) were large, above-ground anti-aircraft gun blockhouses used by the Luftwaffe to defend against Allied air raids on certain cities during World War II. They also served as air-raid shelters for tens of thousands of people and to coordinate air defence.





Flak Tower, Vienna, Austria

After the first RAF raid on Berlin in 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of 3 massive flak towers to defend the capital from air attack. This massive project was completed in a mere 6 months. The priority of the project was evidenced in the fact that the German national rail schedule was altered in order to facilitate the shipment of the necessary materials, namely concrete, steel and lumber to the construction sites.

The flak towers were considered to be invulnerable to attack with the usual ordnance carried by Allied bombers. Constructed with concrete walls up to 3.5 metres thick, each flak tower was supported by a radar dish (retractable behind a thick concrete and steel dome in order to prevent damage during an air raid).

Although Allied aircraft generally appeared to have avoided the flak towers, it is unlikely the towers themselves would have withstood Grand Slam bombs which successfully penetrated much thicker reinforced concrete. The towers were able to sustain a rate of fire of 8000 rounds per minute from their multi-level guns, with a range of up to 14 km in a full 360-degree field of fire. The 3 flak towers around the outskirts of Berlin created a triangle of formidable anti-aircraft fire that covered the center of Berlin.

The flak towers had also been designed with the idea of using the above-ground bunkers as a civilian shelter, with room for 10,000 civilians, and even a hospital ward, inside. The towers, during the fall of Berlin, formed their own communities, with up to 30,000 or more Berliners taking refuge in a single tower during the battle. These towers were some of the safest places in the fought-over city and some of the last places to surrender to Allied forces, eventually forced to capitulate as supplies ran out.

The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm howitzers. Soviet forces generally manoeuvered around the towers, and eventually sent in envoys to seek their submission. Unlike much of Berlin, the towers tended to be fully stocked with ammunition and supplies, and the gunners even used their anti-aircraft 20 mm cannons to defend against assault by ground units. The Zoo Tower was one of the last points of defence, with German armoured units rallying near it at Tiergarten, before trying to break out of the encircling Soviet Red Army.

For a time after the war, the conversion to representative objects with decorated facades was planned. After the war was lost, the demolition of the towers was in most cases unfeasible and many remain to this day.

Flak Tower Design Iterations


Each flak tower complex consisted of:

o a G-Tower (German: Gefechtsturm) or Combat Tower, also known as the Gun Tower, Battery Tower or Large Flak Tower, and

o an L-Tower (German: Leitturm) or Lead Tower also known as the Fire-control tower, command tower, listening bunker or small flak tower.


Flakturm I - Berliner Zoo, Berlin (1st Generation) G-Tower was demolished by the British at the end of the war. L-Tower was demolished after the war.


Flakturm II, G- Tower - Friedrichshain, Berlin (1st Generation)
G-Tower was partially demolished after the war; one side remains visible. L-Tower was demolished after the war.


Flakturm III - Humboldthain, Berlin (1st Generation) G-Tower was partially demolished after the war; one side remains visible. The interior can be visited. L-Tower was partially demolished after the war; some walls remain visible.



Flakturm IV - Heiligengeistfeld, Hamburg (1st Generation): G-Tower was transformed into a nightclub with a music school and music shops. L-Tower was demolished after the war.


Flakturm V - Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg (2nd Generation)
G-Tower remains to this day, L-Tower was demolished after the war.


Flakturm VI - Stiftskaserne, Vienna (3rd Generation)
G-Tower is located within a military base of the Austrian Army.

L-Tower (in Esterhazypark) is used as an aquarium ("Haus des Meeres")

There is a climbing wall on the outside of Flakturm VI.


Flakturm VII - G-Tower & L-Tower - Augarten, Vienna (3rd Generation)

G-Tower remains empty. The entire north-east and half of the east machine gun platforms have been removed during 2007 including the connecting walkways due to deterioration. The tower itself has been reinforced with steel cables encircling the entire structure, 12 cables are located above the machine gun nests, 6 just below, and an additional 4 midway up the tower. The tower is home to thousands of pigeons which nest on every platform and opening. The west side of the structure is used as a cellular communications tower. L-Tower remains empty.


Flakturm VIII - Arenberg Park, Vienna (2nd Generation)

Flakturm VIII G Tower

Flakturm VIII L Tower

G-Tower is used as a storehouse for art. L-Tower remains empty.

I used to live up the hill from the Pragstattel Flakturm in Stuttgart Germany:


Here it is at night:

AMERICAN DESERTER IN GERMANY

Meet Andre Shepherd, American Deserter:


He has chosen to live the good life in Europe, via a legal loophole, while better men and women than him stand by their obligations.

This worthless piece of human debris apparently brainwashed himself, seduced by members of the German punk rock / anti-war movement.

These are your friends, Andre Shepherd. You have thrown in your lot with them.

I lived in Germany and observed this crowd - they are the same long-haired, maggot-infested bunch one finds in any country of the Free World; Che T-shirts, Arab keffiya's, etcetera. Nothing original about them, never had an original thought in their lives; they glorify totalitarian dictators like Fidel Castro and terrorist scum like Yasser Arafat. In 2003 they marched in support of Saddam Hussein - the guy who operated a national level torture machine that included rape rooms, people fed into wood chippers and acid showers.

The deserter Andre Shepherd is currently supported by Ulli Thiel, a 65-year-old peace activist in Karlsruhe. Mr. Thiel and his wife set up a bank account in the soldier's name, and they deposit about $262 a month so he has spending money. Mr. Shepherd says he hopes to finish his university degree in Karlsruhe if he wins asylum and that he could happily spend the rest of his life in Germany. "It's just amazing here," he said one morning recently in Mr. Thiel's living room as his German host poured him a cup of coffee.

The United States has had traitors and deserters in every war we have been in - Andre Shepherd is the latest to don the Yellow Badge of Cowardice.

FOOTPRINT OF THE AMERICAN CHICKEN

Situation Update: German immigration authorities heard Mr Shepherd's case, and are currently examining his eligibility for asylum. A decision should be reached within the next few months. If asylum is knocked back, Mr Shepherd will appeal to the courts, a process which could take up to five years.

In the meantime, Mr Shepherd can legally stay in Germany, but cannot return to the United States. The decision to desert was not an easy one, Mr Shepherd says. "Your home country will always think you are a traitor, whether you were justified or not," he explained.

YOU THINK?

There is no honor in what you do, Andre Shepherd. You enlisted in the middle of two wars and THEN you decided what you are doing is wrong? Let me tell you what you did: you turned your back on your country and your comrades in time of war. For the rest of your life, every morning as you look in the mirror, a little voice will be going in the back of your throat as you try to convince yourself that what you did was OK . . .

Every day, for the rest of your miserable life, you will have to justify your actions to yourself, to your friends and family, and to your children and grandchildren when they ask, "Daddy, what did you do in the big Iraq War?"

"WAR IS AN UGLY THING, BUT IT IS NOT THE UGLIEST OF THINGS. THE DECAYED AND DEGRADED STATE OF MORAL AND PATRIOTIC FEELING WHICH THINKS THAT NOTHING IS WORTH WAR IS MUCH WORSE. THE PERSON WHO HAS NOTHING FOR WHICH HE IS WILLING TO FIGHT, NOTHING WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIS OWN PERSONAL SAFETY, IS A MISERABLE CREATURE AND HAS NOT CHANCE OF BEING FREE UNLESS MADE AND KEPT SO BY THE EXERTIONS OF BETTER MEN THAN HIMSELF." - John Stewart Mill