By Jill Fennema –

Bryan Kroontje served in the United States Army for 33 years. Bryan is Gerrit and Harriet’s sixth child. Gerrit is a veteran of the Korean Conflict.

Bryan joined the army when he was 18 years old, on January 4, 1982.

He had signed up in September, 1981, the day after taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, an aptitude test developed by the Department of Defense. He scored very high in the mechanical and engineering areas, so he joined in that field as a diesel mechanic.

His basic training took place at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, as was his Advanced Individual Training (AIT). He signed up to go to Germany after his training was complete. In July 1982, he left for West Germany. America was in the middle of the Cold War. Germany was a divided nation with a guarded barrier down the middle of the country and a concrete wall in the middle of Berlin.

Bryan’s job as a private was to work for the 11^th Armored Cavalry. His unit patrolled the border just South of the Fulda Gap, and his job was to make sure their equipment – jeeps and tanks mostly – was running well.

“We were told there was risk,” Bryan said. “We were prepared for the worst. We trained constantly.”

Bryan originally signed up to serve for two years. But a year into his service he met a woman named Astrid at a community festival in Bad Kissingen. His base was located near there (in the southeast part of West Germany).

They met in August 1983 and were married in March of 1984. They got married in Denmark, because the paperwork required for getting married in Germany was a big hassle. So, he and a friend both married in Denmark, with each couple serving as the other couple’s witnesses. Bryan and Astrid also had a second wedding ceremony later in Leota at the Bethel Reformed Church.

Bryan found that not only did he fall in love with a German woman, he fell in love with Germany itself and really enjoyed living there. He re-enlisted to serve in Germany and stayed there for two more years.

Even at this point in his life, Bryan had not committed to being a lifetime military member. He just was not really sure what he wanted to do for a living and he continued to advance through the ranks in the Army.

Bryan and Astrid’s children grew up in the military. They went to schools on or near the military bases where they lived. Living the military lifestyle of moving around so often and having to make new friends after each move was a challenge, but Dennis, Jessica, and Tiffiny thrived.

Bryan was a staff sergeant at the time. By the time they arrived in Germany, the border between east and west was open. “It was a time of joy and trepidation between the unified people because they did not know how everything would work out,” he recalls. “The reunification took place so quickly without much time to really plan for it.”

 In December 1991, Bryan’s unit, the 5^th Battalion, 5^th Cavalry Regiment, 3^rd Armored Division was notified that they would be deploying to the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Storm. He had been with this unit for eight months. On Jan 4, 1991, they left for Saudi Arabia in preparation for the conflict.

They transported all their equipment on ships and picked it up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Once they had everything together, they moved to the west, preparing to go north when the word came that Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

While they were preparing for the ground conflict, the air war started.