Danged if I can find this!!

Folks, I need your help! Recently a rather liberal coworker visited Europe and actually toured in the area of several Army bases. She says she did infact visit an Army base or two and saw ZERO U.S. troops at either base! Naturally, she's convinced we have no troops in Europe at all.

Personally, I find this hard to believe. And so, to this end, I'm looking for this, and danged if I can find it! How many US troops, sailors, and airmen do we have in Europe and Japan?

I should mention what started this whole thing. She's very much against the Iraqi war, and I, of course, am saying, "Hey, if we're going to bring our troops home from Iraq, where they're actually fighting, why on earth leave them in Europe and Japan, where we haven't been at war for sixty-odd years??"

Help me out here!!

reply to post by Toelint


This is what I was able to find regarding the topic.

en.wikipedia.org...

Not counting Bosnia or Kosovo, the US military has about 90,000 personnel in Europe.

Hope that helps a little.

You could start here

There is an Excel link in the middle of the page. If you have Excel click it and you can see names and numbers of each country where we have a presence.

Hope this helps.

The US presence in Europe is pretty large and while I haven't looked up the figures, one of the reasons that US servicemen are not evident to some tourists is that they are probably discouraged from wearing uniforms off base.

I live in a city with a very large Air Force Base and you don't see that many servicemen off base wearing uniforms, not because of any dangers, but because service members prefer to relax and blend in on their own time.

Near the base at the lunch hour, you do see uniforms in the eating establishments, but venture only a couple of miles away from the base and you don't see any.

I actually am more likely to see National Guard and Army reservists in uniform on weekends than I am likely to see active duty Air Force personnel in uniform any time.

This was true even when I was in, but in my day Marines stuck out like sore thumbs regardless of what attire we might have worn.

People, this is great! I feel redeemed! Of course, if we ever actually DO pull all these servicemen out of Europe, Beer sales will drop through the floor!