On Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:14:04 -0400, John H
wrote:

If you had decent qualifications they could have sent you to Germany
to defend us from the godless communists like my computer literate
friend from Maryland. With the qualifications you had, you could have
sat in the Stars and Stripes office in Saigon with Al Gore for a few
months and gone back home. The reality is, most people in the military
in the 60s never saw combat or even got close.

Or me. My first and last overseas tours were in Germany, working on plans to defend us from the
Godless communists! Saddam took our attention away from the Fulda Gap for a while. I wonder if the
forces over there still plan for an 'active defense' in the Fulda Gap.

I think the fall of the Soviets and the, loss for Russia, of all of
those countries between Western Europe and Russia widened the border a
bit and made that surprise attack a little less "surprising".
When Hitler went the other way, he had to take Poland and
Czechoslovakia first.
I do understand why Putin gets nervous when we talk about putting them
into NATO tho. The last time the Russians saw that kind of buildup on
their western border, Barbarosa came next.