Berlin 1969 - 23rd Hour, 23rd Psalm

Alfred Lichtenstein, Berlin poet of the Cafe' des Westens circle, penned that observation on his way to the Front in World War I.  He would have noticed the purple cast of fluorescent lighting or the yellow of streetlights in the Berlin of 1969, had he survived the Great War.  Soldiers of the Allied forces in Berlin worked around the clock in an atmosphere best captured by the Hollywood production Night People.  Critics have found that the film has a plot that makes little sense, but it gives the edgy feel of the Divided City at night.

For some Americans the night's work began when the two Duty Trains pulled out of the Rail Transportation Office yard at Lichterfelde-West.  As soldiers and dependents headed for bed in Berlin,  trains were rolling into the night.  Air traffic control, under Four Power supervision, was guiding the last Pan American, British European Airways, and Air France flights into Tempelhof Flughafen.  G-2 Division and Military Police patrols were peering into the darkness.  And at the gates of Andrews Barracks, McNair Barracks, and other facilities, the most ancient duty of soldiers was covered by guard mounts from the units stationed there, along with the Berliners in U.S. uniforms of the 6941st Labor Service Battalion.

When I started to put thoughts of my time in Berlin on paper, it was hard not to remember the nights.  There were good nights and there were bad nights, of course, but perhaps it was the combination of being in a big 24-hour city and the military necessities that make memories hard to shake.

How to present this big subject?  May I narrow this topic down?  Night falls on Berlin in the usual order, from East to West, but it is easy to veer into cheap symbolism regarding East Germany.  Millions of Berliners were busy sleeping during these hours, and the ones who were not have their own writers.  This then is just one view, a journey organized from West to East, overnight across the fitfully-sleeping Weltstadt Berlin, as seen from an unmarked U.S. Army sedan.

Another way to narrow this down is to pick a summer night.  At 52 degrees North latitude, the same as Edmonton, Alberta, the midsummer night in Berlin is short and usually comfortable.  No need to dwell on memories of pushing cars out of snowbanks on the long winter nights, nights when the Cold War really was cold.

We take a cab out to the end of my world, the Havel.  Half lake and half river, in the Southwest corner of Berlin, the Berlin Wall runs down the middle of it.  This has created such a dead-end that we pass only a few late-evening gasthaus customers returning from beer garden socializing.  Our cabbie is a bit nervous heading down into the forest with two foreigners this late at night.  He can't understand why we aren't headed for the Ku'damm "downtown" like any sensible visitor would be.  On this summer evening, night will pass quickly, he comments.

"Don't waste it out here!" is my loose translation.  I have no answer for that, and he falls into silence.  We drive with the car windows rolled down.  Of course, we will be providing the mosquitos with a midnight snack.  The cabbie is wondering what else we are up to, but doesn't ask.

We are meeting our ride at the controlpoint at the end of the Glienicke Bridge, our end that is.  On the other end of the Freedom Bridge, as Americans called it, is Potsdam, in the Soviet Zone of Germany, or East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic.  Most media coverage is fixated on Checkpoint Charlie, handy to the old seat of government and to the newsrooms and wire service bureaux.  Out here it is lonely, surrounded by park land, with a police controlpoint and not much else.  A few famous moments of the Cold War, such as the exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and the Soviet spy, Colonel Rudolf Abel, have taken place here, but many Americans, including journalists, are not sure where "here" is, because it seems so much easier to think of East Germany as being east of West Berlin.

It is so quiet here that we can hear the water of the Glienicker Lake swishing back and forth into the Havel under this bridge.  As we peer west into the dark GDR, trying to see past the brilliantly lit border area, we hear the distant sound of one vehicle coming up very fast.

Turn back to look east, into the American Sector of West Berlin.  Far up the broad lanes of Koenigstrasse, we can see two sets of headlights.  The ordinary light of one set is drowned in the intense light of the other coming up from behind.  The lights of the lead car swerve askew as the driver pulls clear of the onrushing auto behind.  We see the intense lights cant as the speeding second car takes the lead, then cant back unnecessarily on this wide street; the speeder asserts his dominance by cutting off the only other vehicle on the road, arriving first at the controlpoint with a lead of a minute.

It is a Soviet Military Liaison Mission car.  Just as the three Western allies have specific rights to tour the Soviet Sector of Berlin and the Soviet Zone of Germany, so the Soviet Union has parallel rights in the areas occupied after World War II by Britain, France and the United States.  With unrestricted right to pass through the lines a key point of our legal position in Berlin, the Soviet soldiers are waved through.  We do not know why they were speeding, nor why they were driving on a city street with their headlights switched to "bright."  In this quiet hour, it is easy to start speculating.

The second car turns out to be our ride.  A young American in an open white collared shirt and tan slacks, his sideburns too long -- in the 1970 style -- driving a worn Taunus 20M, a German Ford, with Berlin civilian plates.  The car is painted black and looks like a second-hand Berlin taxi, but instead is a second-hand U.S. Army Military Police car.  Fully worn out by the MPs, its engine gunked up from idling for hours or driving slowly through the military housing areas, it risks stalling from vapor locks in hot weather, and its automatic transmission shifts at surprising times.  Now it is disguised with a single coat of black paint.  When scratched, it bleeds a glossy olive green, and there are four doped-in screw holes in the roof where the blue "bubble gum" flashing light used to be installed.

It also declares itself to be an unmarked car by the lack of junk in the back seat.  It is too clean.  The only article on the front seat is a dog-eared copy of the cleverly folding Falkplan -- Stadtplan Berlin.  It is "...patentgefaltet..."  On the back seat is a folded windbreaker.  The last hour of the night, our guide says, will be chilly.  The darkest hour truly is before the dawn, and yes, still is the watch the ends the night.  These old truisms apply to soldiers in plainclothes as much as in uniform.

The young soldier is not as young as some of those seen on duty around town.  With the draft in full swing, college graduates are being swept into the military after their student deferment expires.  With the personnel shortages created by the Vietnam War, he is in an intelligence unit that is entirely expendable -- one term enlistees and draftees, untrained for intelligence work and learning on-the-job.  The unit is drawn from personnel assigned TDY (Temporary Duty, or "seconded" in British and Canadian military terminology).  Berlin in its special situation has many peculiar organizations of this type, on all sides.

The bright lights of the controlpoint make it hard to see the troubled waters of the Havel.  We drive north a little way along the shoreline.  The woods of the Berliner Forest Dueppel lay still behind us, the only sign of life the reflecting stare of a tiny deer caught in our headlights.  Our driver goes around to the back of the car and pulls a big set of binoculars from the trunk.  Passing them back and forth, we orient ourselves in the magnified world of the lenses.  Yes, there is the line of buoys bobbing up and down in the lake.  That is the Berlin Wall, looking as innocent as a fishing net on the surface.  Behind it is the shoreline.  In some places, the shoreline is an extension of the Wall; in others there are luxury villas of the pre-World War II Berlin suburbs.  A handsome, wooden sailboat is tied up in front of one waterfront property.  Someone is turning off the garden lights and stacking up the chairs from a gemuetlich evening.  We can think of the possibility of a long, midnight swim that would bring a person up onto the shore upon which we stand.

We wait for a few minutes, enjoying the comfortable world of Berliners, a world rudely interrupted by the Twentieth Century, and then there is a stir on the water's surface.

A GDR patrol boat -- the U.S. Army identification manual says it is copied from American World War II PT boats (Patrol Torpedo) of the Pacific War -- glides shark like, low in the water toward our vantage point.  Its twin engines rumble.  Twin spotlights dart in all directions.  Twin machine-guns are manned.  These, we learn, replaced the old patrol boats that had only one engine, one searchlight and one machine gun.  Their prey, however remained the same.  The hypothetical swimmer would be fished out of the Havel dead or alive.  The boat-owning cousin from West Berlin who might think of maneuvering up to the buoys for a late-night escape rendezvous with East Germans would be detected by this crew, and would know that the bullets would not stop at the watery boundary line.

Sinister with the low notes of its passing, the shark analogy is completed when its crew spots a flare hissing up into the sky.  Out of sight around a wooded peninsula, border guards on the GDR shore have fired a signal for assistance.  Perhaps in the morning we can come back and see the dead rabbit that they gunned down in their panicky hunt for a refugee, but for now, it's real.  The radio squawks, and the engines rev up.  Crewmen grab for their balance as the "shark" reverses course and heels over in the process.  We watch it hydroplane up out of the water as it speeds toward its prey-- then take a deep breath.  We had forgotten to breath.

"Pray for the rabbit, pray that it IS a rabbit," whispers our guide.

 By day, a different type of boat ruled the Havel.

  Continued....

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Copyright 2003 by Robert W. Rynerson.  Alle Rechte vorbehalten.