Deborah Cole

And that includes the Rammstein Air Base, which is also enormously important for U.S.

military operations in Europe and military action in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and

and in Africa.

So the whole community taken together has about 50,000 US troops, support staff, and then families who are based there.

So these are people who are not just, you know, kind of passing through, they come and they and they stay for a few years with their families.

That's right.

And it's also been in use as part of the U.S.-Israeli led war in Iran.

And whereas some European partners have refused to allow the U.S.

to use their airspace as part of that campaign, German airspace and Rammstein have been very important as part of this latest war as well.

Well, I mean, you know, from the U.S.

perspective, there is a lot of history there.

But also the Germans, you know, some of the people I talked to talked about sort of our Americans.

And almost everyone I spoke to among the Germans had either worked for the Americans or been married to an American or had children.

I mean, there are business ties that go back decades.

I mean, these are communities that are completely interwoven.

It is a community that is very much German-American.

And so for me as an American going to visit, it's sort of like this, it's like a, you know, kind of Truman show.

It's a world within a world where I feel like for half a second, if I kind of squint that I'm somewhere in a, you know, Midwestern town.

So when we were there last Thursday, we got lucky that the carnival, the spring carnival was happening.

And, you know, just as we pulled into town, we saw these rides for kids with Uncle Sam.