 |
| A menacing Leclerc MBT of the 501e Régiment de Chars de Combat seen stalking through the mist at the huge Altengrabow TrÜbPl of the Bundeswehr in Saxonny-Anhalt. Once the sinister Drewitz Stalag XI of WW 2 before becoming the home base of the Soviet 10th Guards Tank Division during the Cold war, the abandonned Altengrabow camp is nowadays used by NATO to train members of the Alliance in urban warfare tactics. © author |
|
|
 |
| Toting a Saab AT4 84 mm short-range anti-tank rocket launcher, a French Army soldier awaits an Opfor tank mimicked by an AMX 30B2 MBT © J.-M. Guhl |
|
|
French mechanised forces
train for urban warfare
on ex-Soviet camp
By Jean-Michel Guhl
in Drewitz, Germany
Heavy rain and a permanent low overcast gave quite a bleak appearance at the troops marauding along the abandonned barrackments of the Altengrabow military camp in this cold and humid West European July of 2007. Having "invaded" Sachsen-Anhalt for a three week long exercise, elements of the French Army 1st Mechanised Brigade, representing a total of some 1520 soldiers, fought stubornly among the woods and grid-patterned streets of the former Soviet-camp to defeat an elusive ennemy composed of rebel militias and kamikaze fighters backed by dissident regulars fielding tanks and anti-tank weapons.
Being Europe's largest urban training camp, Altengrabow has been used regularly by NATO during the past four years in order to train allied units in dealing with assymetrical threats in a full urban environment.
From July 1st to 12th, 2007, the French Army 1ère Brigade mécanisée (1rst Mechanised Brigade) conducted a two-week exercise along a mandate initiated in 2004 by the general staff to improve the capacity of the French armed forces to engage adverse elements in a totallu cosed urban area, whatever the intensity of the combat, while at the same time providing help and assistance to civilian populations. All this meanwhile represents a simple assessment of an evolving situation with an enemy using new methods of urban warfare, including IEDs and booby trapped volunteers (as is today the case in several restless wartorn Muslim countries).
Named AZUR for Action en Zone URbaine, this new form of exercise is a much needed training addition move which will help soldiers and commanders to adapt to the evolution of modern warfare, while giving a good opportunity to learn to fight in a very realistic situation. Later chapters of the AZUR manoeuvre should also see French Army elements train in actual condition in a few selected towns of France.
The 9033 hectare-Altengrabow Training Area (Truppen Übungsplatz der
Bundeswehr), parts of which are still used by the German Army and
various NATO forces, is about 33 km SW of Brandenburg, between the
towns of Drewitz (where a rail siding serving military purposes ends)
and Dörnitz. Erected as a shooting range by the Imperial German Army as
early as 1893, it soon became one of Germany's main military camps.
During WW1 it was also used as a prisonner camp. The former Russian
sites at the northern part of the huge training area, bordering the
present State of Brandenburg, was formerly a Wehrmacht and later Soviet
military training area and WarPac ammunition storage site. During the
Cold war it was under the control of the Soviet Third Shock Army based
at Magdeburg. The Third Shock Army had four tank divisions and one
motorised rifle division. Only the 10th Guards Tank Division was based
at Altengrabow.
|
 |
| A French sentinel on the watch in a former Soviet barrackment © author |
|
|
|
|
 |
| A Medevac SA 330 Puma of the 1er RHC lifts off in front of a deserted former Soviet barrack building at the Altengrabow TrÜbPl on July 4th, 2007 © J.-M. Guhl |
|
|
 |
| French special forces infiltrate an adversary position in one of the many buildings abandonned in the heavily wooded former Soviet camp. Quite a suitable background for training scenarios nurtured by the Russian experience in Chechenia. © author |
|
|
An important communications bunker was co-located on the site, likely to shelter over a thousand people. This
was under direct command of HQ Soviet forces in the German Demotratic Republic, the western
group of forces (ZGV) at Zoßen-Wünsdorf. Nearby Russian barracks provided accommodation for thousands of troops. These
now consist of deserted and almost completely stripped blocks of flats forming an entire small town, including a
district heating plant (looking like a small power station, but without
generators) abandoned but substantially complete.
Elsewhere in the training area is a WW2 shell-filling installation
There is a small district-heating plant nearby as ammunition was stored
in warm conditions at c. 25º C. PoW labour was used in WW2 to
attempt to avoid Allied bombing and the facilities were also subsequently
used by the Russians from 1945 until their departure in 1994. A former Nazi PoW dining hall is elsewhere to be found,
with swastika blotted out but the slogan 'Arbeit Adelt' (work enobles)
retained! There are various surface ammunition storage bunkers of concrete construction and largely earthed-over. Not far away (but not accessible)
former storage buildings for eight SS-20 and SS-22 nuclerar-tipped long-range missiles also remain.
Headquartered for many years and until 1994 at Altengrabow was the Soviet 10th Guards
“Uralsko-Lvovskaya” Armoured Division, grouping the 61st Guards “Sverdlovsko-Lvovski” Armoured Regiment, the 62nd Guards “Permsko-Keletzki” Armoured Regiment and the 63rd Guards “Chelyabinsko-Petrokovski” Armoured Regiment, backed by the 744th Guards “Ternopolski” Self-propelled Artillery Regiment and the 359th Guards “Lvovski” SAM Regiment. A further unit, the 248 Guards “Unechski” Motorised Rifle Regiment, was stationed nearby at Schönebeck. Many reminders of these past Soviet regiments remain, mostly paintings and frescoes adorning the walls here and there, while much has been defaced or vandalised over the years by souvenir-hunters.
|
 |
| Brigadier General Frédéric Serverat, commander of the French 1st Brigade Mécanisée headquartered at Châlons-en-Champagne pictured at Altengrabow © J.-M. Guhl |
|
|
 |
| All trooops practicing at the Altengrabow training centre wear a special GPS supported equipment to record current status of each operator and eventual wound or fatal issue. © author |
|
|
 |
| An AMX 10P Infantry Combat Vehicle of the French Army 1rst Régiment d'Infanterie advances in the streets of Rozenburg, a village within the huge Altengrabow military training compound of the Bundeswehr. © J.-M. Guhl |
|
|
|