Army & Air Force Exchange Service, Europe
US Army, Europe
Looking for more information from military/civilian personnel assigned to or associated with the U.S. Army in Germany from 1945 to 1989. If you have any stories or thoughts on the subject, please email me (webmaster).

The Early Years

Although an Exchange service of sorts operated in Europe during World War I, it is generally conceded that welfare agencies such as the American Red Cross and the YMCA bore the lion's share of the burden of supplying the day-to-day necessities to our Doughboys.

During World War II the Exchange returned to Europe in the form of the ARMY EXCHANGE SERVICE. That organization was born on 24 April 1943 in London and was operated within the framework of the Theater Quartermaster. The first commander was Brigadier General Joseph W. Byron.

The campaigns to follow would see Exchange support often within sight of combat.

North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the Normandy invasion and in through France and into Germany, wherever America's fightingmen trod, the Exchange was there.

When the fighting ceased in an area, the Exchange moved into semi-permanent locations with the Army of Occupation. In 1945, for example, Au Printemps department store in Paris became a PX.

With the destruction of the Third Reich, an Exchange Service designed to meet the needs of a mobile soldier remained in Europe to be tasked with providing for an occupation force which would later expand to become a city of well over a half-million people spread across three continents.

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After the war the London headquarters moved to Paris to be established in the Majestic Hotel within sight of the Eiffel Tower. That move was completed in August 1945.

(Editor's note: At this writing I am still researching and trying to place Colonels Farnsworth and White -- not former AFEX commander. Old Exchange hands recall those men as early commanders, probably between Brigadier General Byron and Colonel Lutz. One account claims that Colonel White followed General Byron and died while serving as Exchange chief. Colonel Farnsworth may have been the man who moved the headquarters from London to Paris in 1945. Since neither can be verified these names have been shelved; however, they will be added and correctly placed at the earliest possible date.)

By late 1945 Quartermaster responsibility for Exchange operations had shifted to the Army of Occupation's Special Activities Division. The title, Army Exchange Service, was retained, however, and Colonel Charles A. Lutz served as the commanding officer.

The headquarters did not remain in Paris long, though, for that same year plans were formulated to relocate to the heart of the US troop concentration. The Exchange moved to Hoechst, Germany, in January-March 1946.

Hoechst, center for much of the IG Farben industrial empire of the Hitler era, and a suburb of Frankfurt, was a locale generally spared the horrors of the war. It was into those very Farben buildings that the Exchange moved.

Colonels Lutz, T. R. Phillips and A. C. Morgan commanded Exchange operations over the next year as the US forces began to stabilize and adapt to the task of guarding freedom's frontier against a new menace -- Communism.

To fully grasp what running an overseas Exchange in those days meant, it must be realized that all of Germany and indeed most of post-war Europe was little more than a sea of rubble and shattered economies.

Currencies were worthless. Stores were empty. Textiles were scarce. There were few buildings and warehouses available for immediate use. Where goods were stored, pilferage was rampant. The Blackmarket was everywhere and most items were strictly rationed.

Back home a nation untouched by bombs and destruction nevertheless was faced with shortages. What could be obtained was difficult to deliver and shelve. Colonel T. R. Phillips described the situation at his July 1946 Army Exchange Conference in these words:

The merchandise situation in the States is such that noneof you would believe it. Gods just can't be had. We ordered twenty thousand women's shorts and slacks several months ago, and we were told we would get half in September and half just in time for winter.

Orders had to be projected as much as a year in advance. Much of the merchandise found its way onto the Blackmarket. It was also difficult to completely change a wartime distribution system that demanded a heavy supply in the stores with small reserves rather than vice versa.

Regarding that Blackmarket, Colonel Phillips voiced the observation that:

Many people are using cigarettes for services, laundry, etc., and patronizing the blackmarket. I believe 50 percent of the people stopped smoking when they realized the value of cigarettes. (Note: at that time each adult was rationed 10 packs of popular-brand cigarettes, plus two so-called off-brand.)

Since the domestic front offered little hope of adequate merchandise stocks for PX customers, the Exchange opened buying offices in Switzerland, Sweden, France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, England and Scotland. Inflationary trends and the fact that many of those countries were war-torn also resulted in a critical situation -- as problem-riddled and challenge-strewn, from a supply viewpoint, as the war itself had been. A sidenote to those early post-war days was the fact that civilian employees wore a uniform and were generally treated like active duty soldiers (actually most civilian employees in those days were ex-soldiers who either were discharged overseas to work for the Exchange or were hired in New York and returned soon after).

It was not until 1949-1950 that snazzy stateside-styled suits and dresses began to be seen in the civilian military-associated community. Even then, Americans assigned to depots or out-of-the-way locations still wore olive drab.

At that time one depot served as a major clearinghouse for all merchandise shipped into Europe from the States -- the Katterbach depot located near Ansbach, Germany. That depot was rebuilt from the rubble of a former Luftwaffe air base. The task of rebuilding fell to German SS prisoners of war.

The early summer of 1947 saw the Exchange headquarters again pull up stakes and move, this time to the entirely different environment of the famed resort town of Bad Nauheim.

Spa and health center since the days of the Romans, Bad Nauheim provided the Exchange not with industrial buildings for office space. This time the two best hotels in town housed the headquarters.

The spring of 1948 ushered in a period of crisis for the entire Free World as the opening salvo of what would be termed the Cold War was fired with the initiation of the Soviet blockade of the Four-Power-controlled city of Berlin, located 110 miles inside the Russian Zone.

As American and British pilots braved the blockade by round-the-clock mercy missions to relieve the starving and freezing people of that city,so, too, was the Exchange on the scene.

Canteens, mobile exchanges and temporary PXs of every size and description became fixtures at airports and supply points throughout Free Europe to provide continuous relief to the haggard and exhausted plane crews.

The blockade, to run from 1 April 1943 through 30 September 1949 would see 2,343,315 tons of food and coal airlifted into Berlin, a feat supported from start to finish by an Exchange which had perfected the "instant response" method of service just a few short years earlier during World War II.

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