Brian arrived at Warner Barracks, tucked into the edge of the Bavarian town of Bamberg, about 62 kilometers north of Nuremberg. He recognized the name from school history lessons—Nuremberg, site of the post-war trials. It felt strange to be so near a place where history had passed its sentence.

  At the base, he was assigned to a squadron and slotted into a troop, the organizational jigsaw of army life fitting around him like a well-oiled machine. His new room had six bunks, and five other lads he didn’t know. If someone left—transfer, injury, sudden paperwork—someone else appeared in their place. The beds were steel, the banter was constant, and the lockers slammed like gunfire.

  On his second day, he was helping unload a truck with five others. They were taking a break, half-covered in dust and diesel stink, when the corporal in charge looked him over with a squint.

  “You need a name,” the corporal said, chewing a toothpick.

  He glanced at one of the others, a lanky guy with a moustache and headphones clamped permanently to his ears.

  “You look like Floyd. He’s out tomorrow—being transferred. From now on, you’re Floyd. Any objections?”

  “No, corporal,” Brian replied, trying to sound neutral.

  He didn’t think he looked anything like the other guy. Maybe it was the nose. Maybe it was the attitude. Maybe it was easier to recycle a name than think of a new one. He wondered how the first Floyd had earned it. Maybe it was music-related. It beat being called “Pink,” anyway.

  From that moment on, he was Floyd. And Floyd he would stay.

  The squadron’s job was temporary bridge construction—essential kit for crossing rivers where no bridge existed, or where one had been blown to smithereens. Their primary equipment was called a Ribbon Bridge, also known as a Foldable Float Bridge.

  It was an ingenious bit of modular engineering. Built from aluminium alloy sections, each bay was trucked to the site, then unfolded and launched into the water. The sections locked together like a steel jigsaw on steroids. They could be laid out as a ferry or linked to form a full bridge.

  Simple in concept. Hellish in execution.

  Most of the bridge work happened at night, across the Main River and its web of tributaries. In daylight, they hid out in the Wald—the forest—cleaning kit, checking gear, and trying to dry out their socks. In winter, the boots steamed when you took them off. In summer, the mosquitoes tried to carry you away.

  Floyd often came back wet, filthy, and exhausted. It was dangerous work, especially in the dark. Metal, water, and fatigue were a bad mix.

  After six months of hauling, ferrying, and not falling into rivers, he was promoted to Private First Class.

  They said the biggest killer of personnel stationed in Germany wasn’t enemy fire—it was road accidents. The winding roads, the weather, the speed. And the vehicles.

  Floyd was put on a driving course for tracked vehicles. Specifically, the M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier—a 13-ton aluminium beast that sounded like a coffee tin full of rocks when it was running.

  It handled like a fridge on roller skates. One rainy night, Floyd nearly lost control on a mountain road. The back end slid out, the whole APC teetered on the verge. The crew in the back went silent. For a moment, Floyd thought this is it. But the vehicle held.

  “Hell of a view,” someone muttered once they were safely off the hill.

  Another incident made that one look tame.

  They’d been tasked with testing a freshly installed ferry crossing over a narrow river with steep, muddy banks. Floyd’s APC was the test run. The ferry moved out, bumped into place at the far side, and Floyd was told to drive off.

  But the bank was too steep and too slick. The tracks spun uselessly in the muck. No traction. The APC began to slide backward, inch by inch, towards the river.

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  Floyd dropped gears fast. The engine roared. The vehicle held—barely—until the ferry scrambled back to retrieve them.

  Back at base, there was an inquiry.

  Why hadn’t matting been laid for traction?

  No one had a good answer. An officer somewhere got a rocket up the arse for that one.

  Floyd just kept quiet, scraped the mud from his boots, and made a mental note: Always check the bank before you drive off it.

  Floyd's time in Germany wasn't all bridges and beer. Some memories stuck with him for darker reasons.

  There were deaths—more than he’d expected in peacetime.

  One night, during an exercise in heavy rain, a pair of infantry soldiers crawled under a tank to get out of the wet and get some sleep. The rain didn’t stop. The ground softened. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the tank sank into the earth.

  By the time the soldiers realized, it was too late.

  They never made it out.

  Floyd didn’t know them. But it shook him.

  A more chilling incident happened during a simulated bridge demolition. One of the engineers lost his footing and fell. On the way down, he grabbed a wire for balance.

  The bridge crossed a railway. The wire connected to an overhead electric line.

  He didn’t survive. Floyd knew him. And he never forgot the sight.

  In another case, a member of Floyd’s troop was guiding a vehicle into a forest clearing. He stepped back to get a better angle, hand raised, shouting “Stop!” just as the driver hit the brakes.

  The chassis halted. But the vehicle’s swinging suspension kept moving. It crushed the man against a tree with silent finality.

  Floyd knew him too.

  The squadron was deployed on a massive NATO exercise. They’d constructed a bridge across the Main River, then stood by while tank after tank crossed—French, British, American, Dutch. Floyd had never seen so much metal in one place.

  The delays stretched on. The men stayed on site for 36 hours without sleep. When they finally returned to barracks, they collapsed into bed like sacks of sand.

  The next morning, the squadron was shaken awake by the guard.

  A man from the fourth floor had been found dead on the stairs down to the basement. It looked like a freak accident—he’d been adjusting his TV aerial out the window and either slipped or blacked out.

  There was an inquiry. Everyone was interviewed by the special investigation unit. Where were you? What did you see? How well did you know him?

  No one had answers. Just fatigue.

  The commanding officer who oversaw the bridge wouldn't rise any further in rank. It wasn’t official, but everyone knew.

  There was already a memorial stone on base—a quiet slab set in the grass. It commemorated members of a German Pioneer regiment that had drowned nearby while building a bridge in the 1930s.

  Bridges were never truly safe.

  But it wasn’t all death and grim procedures. The Wald, the Bavarian Forest, came with its own surreal comic timing.

  The forest rangers would appear like ghosts out of the trees, wagging fingers.

  “No hammering nails into trees!”

  “Take your rubbish home. Don’t bury it. The wild boars dig it up and spread swine fever.”

  One night, Floyd was on radio watch. He stepped outside to relieve himself and froze.

  Six striped piglets—wild boars. They trotted past under moonlight, looking cute and entirely too calm.

  Floyd retreated indoors, zipped up fast.

  “If there are piglets,” he muttered, “Mum ain’t far.”

  Another time, a missing sentry was found at dawn, perched halfway up a tree.

  “Is it gone yet?” he whispered from the branches.

  A boar had sniffed at him in the night. He’d scrambled upward like a monkey and refused to come down.

  Not every mishap was harmless. One night, around 2 AM, Floyd received a radio order—the troop was to move immediately to a new location. The grid reference was encrypted.

  Floyd decoded it, then woke the Staff Sergeant.

  “This grid correct?” the sergeant asked.

  Floyd double-checked. “Yes, Staff. That’s what it decodes to.”

  Soon, other sergeants and the troop officer were awake, huddled over the map.

  “This can’t be right,” someone said. “This is nearly the Inner German Border.”

  The officer radioed command, querying the location.

  Command checked. Called back.

  “Ah. The wrong cipher key was used. That’s yesterday’s code.”

  Someone had forgotten to update the system at midnight.

  The whole group burst into laughter, the officer holding down the transmit button so command could hear it. The grid they'd almost deployed to was practically Soviet doorstep.

  The radio operator at command got torn a new one. A stern reminder followed: “Keep alert. A mistake like this could start a war.”

  The Wald had its own folklore. Floyd sometimes saw dolls made of straw tied to trees and branches.

  Locals, he was told, made them to keep trolls and spirits away.

  He wasn’t entirely sure it didn’t work.

  One of the lads, a corporal named Stubbs, operated a Combat Engineer Tractor—a kind of armoured bulldozer with a full-width bucket. Its job: dig in tanks. Create trenches deep enough that only the turret stuck out, reducing visibility and improving protection.

  Stubbs smoked a pipe while he worked, slow and steady. His nickname was "Una", after the British actress Una Stubbs—no one could quite remember why.

  One day, Una took Floyd into town to visit his tobacconist. Floyd bought a pipe of his own and took it up.

  He found it calming. Something steady in the chaos.

  There was helicopter training too. Floyd rode in a CH-47 Chinook, flying low along river valleys with the back ramp open. The world pitched and tilted, the horizon rising and falling like a boat in heavy swell.

  They abseiled down with rifles and gear, learned to hitch and unhitch underslung loads mid-flight.

  Once, the commanding officer flew over unannounced to test their camouflage. He dropped smoke grenades onto their position to simulate a chemical attack.

  Someone banged metal together and shouted:

  “GAS! GAS! GAS!”

  The men scrambled into their NBC suits, masks fogging up, fingers fumbling with awkward gloves.

  “What a life,” Floyd thought, eyes stinging inside the mask.

  Yet despite all that—the mud, the mishaps, the mines and the wild pigs—Floyd enjoyed West Germany.

  They drove on the same side of the road.

  Bamberg was the brewing capital of Germany. Nine breweries in the town alone. More in the hills beyond.

  On exercises near Nuremberg, he saw fields full of wooden poles, each with vines climbing skyward.

  “Hops,” someone said.

  Strictly speaking, they were bines, not vines—climbers with stiff hairs instead of tendrils. But the beer didn’t seem to care.

  Floyd bought an old Mercedes 200D, diesel, boxy, slow but unstoppable. On weekends, if he was off duty, he’d drive out into the countryside with his camera, snapping churches, castles, farms, and forests.

  He once made it all the way to Cologne and stood beneath the K?lner Dom, its twin spires defying history.

  Bombs had hit the city in World War Two. Floyd had seen photos. Yet the cathedral still stood.

  “How the hell did this survive?” he whispered, awestruck.

  After a year, Floyd was promoted to Corporal.

  He was ready for a new challenge. Bridge-building had its dangers, but he wanted to build things that didn’t need floating.

  He applied for a transfer to a construction squadron.

  And waited.