Baumholder has been my favorite duty station in the 23 years we have traveled with the military. Forty minutes from the French border, the Weinstrasse (wine road). It was less than 90 minutes from Frankfurt, central to a lot of cute towns like Idar Oberstein and less than an hour from Frankfurt Hahn, an international airport and Ryan Air. And Baumholder was in the middle of it all.
BOOM and a puff of smoke. Was that us?? A moment later the car died on the side of the road. I coasted the once mobile BMW down the hill and off the autobahn near Saarbrucken. Get out of the …