Disbelief on the anniversary of the Berlin Wall going up

Master Sergeant Jerry Pratt of Independence served from 1956 to 1976 in the U.S. Air Force, including tours of duty in Germany, Greenland and France.


Do you know where you were 50 years ago? What? Can’t remember yesterday? Do you remember what earth-shaking world event occurred about this time back then?

It was Aug. 13, 1961, that East Germans put up the Berlin Wall. The wall in Berlin was one part of that “Iron Curtain” that Winston Churchill spoke of at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

We saw on the television news people jumping from apartment windows in buildings on Bernauerstrasse, the street dividing East from West Berlin. There is a picture of an elderly woman being lowered by hand from a window to others below in order to escape years of imprisonment behind the wall of her apartment building that would become a part of the dreaded and despicable Berlin Wall.

The Wall would separate families from each other, interfere with Easterners keeping jobs in the West and impress an indelible element of distrust in the psyche of several generations of the Eastern population. It would keep the entire world on nervous alert for the next 28 years.

People who lived in the East could still work in the West, but they had to have identification papers in order to get through various checkpoints, gates in the wall manned by military guards who took their work seriously. Man, woman or child – it made no difference.

What is a person to do? Take it on the chin and keep going, waiting for things to get better? Go with the flow? What is the price of freedom? The answer to that question is the 1,065 citizens who paid the ultimate blood price in the Wall’s 28-year history.

What is it worth to you? What does it mean to be free? The answers to most of these questions can be found in artifacts and memorabilia of that era left behind at the Berlin Wall Museum and the U.S. Army Checkpoint Charlie Museum, just down the street from a border crossing on Friedrichstrasse.

I served a four-year tour in Germany from 1971 to 1975. The highlight of my four-year tour was a long-awaited trip to Berlin, one month before we returned to the United States. The trip was postponed, mainly out of my fear of some catastrophic border incident involving my capture and detention as a spy, never to see my family again. There was also some red tape involved. There was more to getting to Berlin and back again than just deciding that one day we would go.

Each member of my family – my wife, son, daughter and I – had to have our own set of travel orders. Berlin travel orders were referred to as “flag” orders, a reference to the imprint in the header of the U.S. flag. The detail of the orders was spelled out in English, French, German and Russian. A person could travel to East Berlin if he wanted to, but that had to be spelled out in his orders. I didn’t want to.

There was also a briefing for the military member, the context of which was to be passed along to the rest of the family. Not much memorable about that, except I erroneously remembered some mentioning of the restriction about using surface transportation to get around the city – i.e., streetcar or bus. The restriction concerning use of the streetcar was correct, as the streetcar was operated by East Berlin and was not required to stop at border crossings. A person could accidentally wind up on the other side of the Wall if they weren’t careful! The erroneous assumption on my part concerned the use of public buses, the price of that error being paid over several days and miles of worn shoe leather.

A G.I. could get to Berlin by flying, driving or taking the “duty train.” The duty train was two or three cars belonging to and operated by the U.S. Army, attached to a German train. It ran from the Haupbahnhof (main train station) in Frankfurt in the West to Berlin.

I was able to get reservations for my family coming and going. We traveled by military shuttle bus from our home base at Zweibrucken two hours to Rhein-Main Air Base at the Frankfurt Airport. We took a city bus to the bahnhof. The train left Frankfurt at 8 p.m. The benches in the compartment made up into bunks, so we all had a spot to lie down and sleep. In the middle of the night, we pulled into the border crossing at Helmstedt.

I woke up to catch a look at the armed “welcoming party” on the station platform. We wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. At the border, they changed engines and train crew, and the Army officer in charge of our section had to take everyone’s passports and papers to be checked by the East Germans against the train manifest in the station. It took several hours.

Once cleared, we were again on our way, and when we woke up the next morning at 7 a.m., we were pulling into Berlin. A military bus took us to our quarters at the military guest house in the Dahlem section of Berlin. The next four days consisted of touring Berlin by subway and, for the first two days, on foot due to the erroneous assumption that we could not use city buses. Once the matter was clarified, it was a relief!

While we were still on foot, we marched from Checkpoint Charlie via the Michelin Green Guide to the Brandenburg Gate, a distance of about three miles. A funny thing happened along the way (funny to some people). As you get near the Brandenburg Gate, you pass a kind of no-man’s land not developed since the war and enclosed by a tall, chainlink fence.

Several blocks ahead, the fence immediately on our right took a sudden turn away from the sidewalk. From there, there was an attractive forested green platz. Straight ahead was the gate. There was a footpath intersecting the sidewalk, coming out of the forest, and on that path, I could see two men, dressed in long, black coats, walking toward us. I froze, and panic set in. In my own mind – I didn’t know how it could happen – we had somehow gotten on the other side, and the guys in black were coming for me! It took my wife some time to calm me down before I could think straight again. But that really made me nervous.

A short walk farther and we arrived at the gate. The gate was just the other side of the Wall. There were two East German towers about a block apart. Over the wall on the East side was an observation platform where the East Germans could stand and look back at us. It was a warm summer day and windows were open in the guard towers. As far as we knew then in 1975, the Wall was never coming down.

Imagine my surprise in November 1989 as we watched not only the wall coming down but the Russian regime collapsing and the eventual reunification of Germany!

Fast forward to 2001. My wife, Joan, and I visited Europe. We drove from Amsterdam to Berlin. This time, we were visiting a free Berlin. We took the U-Bahn, the subway, to Friedrichstrasse. Checkpoint Charlie had been dismantled, but a replica had been built to look just like the original. Across the street, we toured the Wall Museum.

I am still awestruck by the history of those events, and all of the unique and determined efforts to escape oppression. We walked down Friedrichstrasse toward Unter den Linden, a grand boulevard that leads back to the gate. On Friedrichstrasse, we pass a sparkling white marble building. It is the British Embassy. On Unter den Linden, around the corner, we pass another impressive white marble building with big brass doors. It is the Russian Embassy.

Straight ahead was the gate. It was a solemn moment. In 1975, I could not imagine what I was about to do would ever happen. The Wall had come down! Joan and I walked through the Brandenburg Gate from East to West unrestricted! We didn’t have to plot our escape to the West in secret as so many had to do during the time the Wall existed.

On the bright, sunny day in 2001, everything was on the up and up, completely out in the open, and not just for us, but for thousands of others in Berlin from all over the world! The history of the Berlin Wall is a significant testament of the futility of creating barriers of any kind to confine or repel humanity. Walls eventually do come tumbling down.