Mauden Mauler

D Vautier
11/2006

I got to Germany just in time for a big war game.  My initial thrill was short lived as this grotesque nightmare began to play itself out.  The following is an account of my involvement in the exercise, albeit small, but it does somewhat hint at the immensity and complexity of these operations.

Mauden Mauler was the name assigned to a large military exercise involving more that 250,000 troops on both sides, being conducted in East Bavaria the spring of 1965.  It was one of those long-planned, much-hyped, high-profile war games that pitted the invincible forces of USAEUR (United States Army Europe, pronounced “use-a-raur”) against a much smaller fledging but surprisingly flexible and nimble West German Army.  The army conducted these "alerts" every year. 

Soon after I arrived at my permanent unit, the A/2/25th in Bamberg, a small town northeast of Nuremberg, I was given a three-quarter ton truck to drive.  I had never driven a truck before, and I didn’t know the first thing about shifting.  I didn’t know what a clutch was.  So I had to learn real fast.  I drove around the motor pool for a few hours, shifting and grinding gears, while a lot of guys stood around making snide comments in my direction accompanied by the usual obscene gestures.  But I finally got the hang of it.

Later in the week, they sent me to driving school to learn all the funny international road signs; red slashed circles, orange squares, yellow triangles, and the “ausfarts” and “einfarts” (exit and entrance).  After I got my license, I had to spend several hours learning how to back up a trailer.  In the Army you had to know how to back up a trailer.  They have lots of trailers.  They love trailers.

The very next week we were on Mauden Mauler.

We all knew that Mauden Mauler was to come soon, but we didn’t know exactly when.  Something told me that it would probably start at some ridiculous time, like in the middle of the night, like at 2 AM or some ungodly hour (just to keep the troops on their toes).  Sure enough it started at 2 AM and we proceeded to load all our equipment in the dark and move out.

In a big military exercise even though everything is supposed to be well planned out, not everything seems to work.  It’s supposed to run like a gigantic clock.  When the clock keeps the right time, everybody’s happy.  When one piece of machinery fails, or gets moved, or runs slow, (shall we say gets captured or overrun by the enemy), then another piece has to take up the slack, and another piece of machinery has to get more strain, etc., etc.  Pretty soon the timetable is all mixed up, and nobody knows what to do anymore.  It has a cascading effect.  I think that is what happened in this exercise.

It was planned to be a ten-day exercise and as expected we only had C-rations for about 5 days.  Then the rain started.  I never remember a time in my life where it rained so much, but maybe it was not that bad, but we were out in the rain constantly and it only seemed that way.  I am sure there is a God that dictates that when these big stupid war games start, He’s going to make it plenty wet, especially when the vehicles don't even use roads.

Our first bivouac was a gently sloping meadow with a farm on one side.  On the other side we saw the lights of a small guesthouse.  We were close to civilization.  But after all the work of loading up and lack of sleep, all we wanted to do was sack out.  I was assigned guard duty but half way through my watch, the call came down.  “Move out--Fast.”

I remember grabbing gear and pitching it in our truck.  We didn’t care about arranging it because of the darkness and we couldn’t use any lights because we did not have air superiority (part of the drill).  So we just threw equipment in the back; including expensive T-2 theodolites, DME equipment, range poles, sleepers, recording books, tools, shovels, mud, water—it all went into the back of the trucks.  I started driving and followed the truck in front of me, but I could barely see it with all the mud everywhere.  We drove for about half an hour and came to our secondary bivouac area.  My sergeant pointed me in the direction of this clear field.

“Hey sarge, that’s not a field.  That’s a lake, for God’s sake!  I can’t drive in there,” I shouted.

He looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot and said “You heard me soldier! Move it.”

“OK” I shrugged.

Whoosh.  Water came up to the floorboard.  Now you have to understand just how high the floorboard is on one of those big Chrysler ¾ ton trucks.  Real real high.  We waded out, grabbed the winch cable and tied it to the nearest tree.  The tree came down on our windshield.  We tied the winch cable to another tree, which held.  This was all done under cover of almost complete darkness.  When we got to drier land (there was really no “dry” land anywhere, just less wet and soggy), we set up a perimeter and collapsed.  Thirty minutes later the word came “Move out” and we got to do the whole thing again.

It was a long drive to our third bivouac, which turned out to be a heavily wooded area.  This whole thing didn't make any sense.  All we were doing was running.  from what?  The sergeant directed me to back into a spot with my trailer tucked between two trees.  “Hey sarge, I don’t think I fit in there.” “Yes you do.” He answered, and from the sound of his voice I was not going to argue with him.  My navigator (the guy who rides shotgun) jumped out to help me back the trailer.  He left his door open and I was watching him closely in my side mirror.  “Follow…follow harder…now follow easier…”  Crunch…opps…we just lost his door on that tree.  Throw it in the back.

I can’t remember too much more except that the exercise was called after just five days because of the heavy rain and excessive maneuver damage.  The West Germans had been beaten back, but that was only so the Americans wouldn’t look so bad.  Mauden Mauler went down in history as a great success, despite high maneuver and property damage and a few accidental deaths.

A hot shower felt good after five days in the field--one of the best hot showers I ever took.