So early this AM (maybe around 4 AM)....over on the far western parts of Mainz (neighborhoods of Mainz-Lerchenberg, Mainz-Finthen and Ober-Olm)....cops got calls. Gunshots heard.
Location? If you were driving 'out' of Mainz (heading toward K-town), you'd be in the region of these neighborhoods (as is ZDF, the public TV network buildings).
The Germans cops came out in some force....expecting trouble.
They eventually arrived at a American Army training area (I suspect this is adjacent to the old Mainz-Finthen runway area), where a couple of MP vehicles were guarding the training area.
Long story to this? The US Army decided to conduct an exercise there, and the gunshots were part of the scenario, before a group of personnel were to be shipped out (one can only assume this is part of the deployment situation related to Russia-Ukraine).
Odd deal? Well....most will say that there just is never a 4 AM exercise in this urbanized area. Maybe if you go back forty years....you'd find that this was normal, but in the recent decades? No.
Machine-gun fire rustling up Germans these days? If you just had two 5-second episodes of rapid-fire in my rural area....it'd freak out the residents, and create a fair amount of panic. Terrorism, whether people want to admit it or not....is generally on people's minds these days.
The exercise? Well....MPs said it'd continue on for most of the day. Better places for it? Well, you'd have to drive all the way to Baumholder or down past Stuttgart....which means most of a day wasted on getting people there, and back.
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