The main reason for our trip was to see JHQ before the base is closed next year. This has always need a different place, not easily found on a map, definitely not to google street view, a place where military personnel lived side by side with a handful of civilians, after we left it became a NATO base (there is no longer any sign of Americans ever being there), but now is rapidly becoming a ghost town.
Of the few people left living on base, most of whom are heading home (apparent by the sheer number of removal vans) the rest are moving in Cassel's house.
It was very weird being back there, a place where I spent 6 and a half year of my early life. We still remembered the stories, that will go down in the Perry story book:
The roundabout that Mum went the wrong way around
The steps that apparently me or my sister fell down at the Naafi
The shed and the kitten saga (think it has to go down as a saga)
The stories that my brother created from visiting us there
But now this place is almost deserted. The traffic lights are all out, the houses for the most part empty, the Naafi has very little stock, the buildings are being stripped, the shops are empty, the buses will stop running in a few months, the grass is becoming over grown. All in all, the place is not the vibrant base that I grew up in. I spent a little time wondering if the people currently there knew what it used to be like, or if this (as it currently is) is all that they know of.
