Dumb but true story: when I arrived at Ramstein in April 1983, the runway was closed for rebuilding. A few jets were on station flying off the taxiway (which many years later was rebuilt to be a second official runway) with the rest deployed to various places. One day someone else and I were walking down Fox Ramp when we saw a civilian German truck with a load of old concrete chunks from the runway coming up the taxiway in the Restricted Area with a security cop pickup in hot pursuit. The truck driver stopped in the middle of the taxiway and got out of his truck, the cops jumped out and pointed their M-16s at him. They yelled in English at him to lay down on the ground, he hollered back something in German, and they stood there yelling back and forth, neither side understanding the other. Finally the cops rushed the truck driver, knocked him to the ground and held him with an M-16 pointed at his back. They cuffed his wrists together and then picked him up and made him get in the back of their pickup, whereupon they drove him out of the restricted area gate by the barracks. His concrete truck was still in the taxiway, and about now two F-4Es came around the curve and found their way blocked. They stopped and sat there idling, no doubt calling the command post. After a few minutes the cops drove back in with the truck driver, they stopped by his truck and hollered at him to go move it, and he yelled back at them in German and wouldnt budge. Me and whoever was with me were busting a gut laughing and the cops were getting madder by the minute. After much screaming back and forth, the driver finally got in his truck and pulled it up to the side of Fox Ramp so the F-4s could get by. Immediately the cops stopped him, got him out of his truck, cuffed him again and drove him back out of the area in their pickup. The truck was there the rest of the day but gone the next day.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 22:38:13 +0000
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