Rutte asks for one page

Two C-17s that should have left at 0900 are still sitting there. Cleared three times by our side. Zero times by the Germans. Reason on the hold sheet: "security inspection."

Nobody is shouting. That is what is frightening about it. It is completely quiet out there.

The retrograde has started. ~38,000 personnel and families out of Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain. Largest movement out of Europe since 1990.

And it is already stuck, for a reason nobody planned: the asset freeze broke the payment chain. German suppliers cannot lawfully take US government money. Some aircraft are held because nobody can sell the Air Force jet fuel.

Europe froze the assets of a departing army and thereby prevented it from departing.

Nobody drafted that. It is the single most consequential unintended effect of the entire crisis and it came out of a payments annex.

I need people to understand what Berlin is actually asking about tonight, because it is not the trucks.

There are American B61s at Büchel. If nuclear-certified custodial units go home inside a general withdrawal, nuclear sharing does not get cancelled. It just stops existing, one flight at a time, without anyone deciding anything.

That is what the hold is about.

Employment notices started arriving today for base contract staff. My neighbour has worked at that gate for twenty-six years.

Everyone keeps calling this a geopolitical crisis. In this town it is a redundancy letter.

My husband has been on that base for six days without leaving it.

I am not going to say which base or what he does. I will say that he called tonight and asked me to look up what a "custodial detachment" is, because he did not want to say more than that, and I understood him perfectly.

We are a normal family. We do the shop on Thursdays.