A US Army website for its bases in Bavaria, Germany published a list of food banks in the area that could help soldiers and staff as part of its “Shutdown Guidance,” the subtext being that soldiers and base employees might need to obtain free food from German government services during the government shutdown.
The webpage included information about which services are affected by the ongoing shutdown of the federal government, FAQs about how to work during a furlough, and links to apply for emergency loans. After the shutdown guidance’s publication, the Army changed it and removed the list of food banks, but the original has been archived here.
The shutdown of the American federal government is affecting all its employees, from TSA agents to the troops, and the longer people go without paychecks, the more they’re turning to nonprofits and other services to survive. American military bases are like small cities with their own communities, stores, and schools. The US Army Garrison Bavaria covers four bases spread across the German state of Bavaria and is one of the largest garrisons in the world, hosting around 40,000 troops and civilians.
Like many other American military websites, the Garrison’s has stopped updating, but did publish a page of “Shutdown Guidance” to help the people living on its bases navigate the shutdown. At the very bottom of the page there was a “Running list of German support organizations for your kit bags” that included various local food banks. It listed Tafel Deutschland, which it called an “umbrella organization [that] distributes food to people in poverty through its more than 970 local food banks,” Foodsharing e.V, and Essen für Alle (Food for everyone).
The guidance also provided a link to the German version of the Too Good to Go App, which it described as a service that sells surprise bags of food to reduce food waste. “These bags contain unsellable but perfectly good food from shops, cafés, and restaurants, which can be picked up at a reduced price. To obtain one of these bags, it must be reserved in the app and picked up at the store during a specified time window, presenting the reservation receipt in the app,” the US Army Garrison Bavaria’s shutdown guidance page said.
According to snapshots on the Wayback Machine, the list of food banks was up this morning but was removed sometime in the past few hours. The US Army Garrison Bavaria did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment about the inclusion of the food banks on its shutdown guidance page.
The White House has kept paying America’s troops during the shut down, but not without struggle. At the end of October, the Trump administration accepted a $130 million donation from the billionaire Timothy Mellon to help keep America’s military paid. Though initially anonymous, The New York Times revealed Mellon’s identity. This donation only covered some of the costs,, however, and the White House has had to move money between accounts to keep the cash flowing to its troops.
But the US military isn’t just its soldiers, sailors, Marines, Guardians, and airmen. Every military base is staffed by thousands of civilian workers, many of them veterans, who do all the jobs that keep a base running. In Bavaria, those workers are a mix of German locals and Americans. The German government has approved a $50 million support package to cover the paychecks of its citizens affected by the shutdown. Any non-troop American working on those military bases is a federal employee, however, and they aren’t getting paid at all.
