By now, my interests had shifted, it was time for my driving license, my first car, and above all my first
experiences with the opposite sex. However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, experiences with the Americans
continued to cross my path in a serious way.
September 1969, at the age of 21, I got married and started a family. Nobody could have guessed that after
five years of marriage, it would be an American of all people, and on top of that my best friend, who ran
off with my wife. I was suddenly left alone with our four year old son, Guido, got divorced Dec. 1974.
That was a hefty double blow which almost tore away the ground from under my feet. It took an awful lot of
effort to win back this steady ground, after several failed attempts. After hasty decisions about which
apprenticeship to begin, I experienced one failure after the next, and I became completely disheartened.
And now this fiasco, just as I was in the middle of my training as a police officer and had achieved my
first successes. Who knows what would have happened if my colleagues at the time hadn't been so caring and
supportive? In summer 1975 came the next bad hit, my beloved Grandma suddenly passed away. I suppose that
all the trouble and worries of the past months have been too much for her. After I'd pulled myself together
again, I met Angela. We both got married in March 1976. Angela also raised my first son, was a perfect
mother. With her and our two kids, (Michael was born May 1977) my family was complete again. Many fine
years in joy and harmony followed.
Despite this unhappy experience, I maintained my friendships with the Americans. It was my goal not to allow
my disappointment to lead to generalizations. I liked their mentality, their "easy way of life". During
my bike rides in the Grunewald, it was now even rarer that I came across them. Out of consideration for the
civilian population, they now carried out their exercises predominantly during the fall and winter months.
They increasingly searched out the well-known military exercise ranges in West Germany (like Wildflecken,
Hohenfels, Bergen, Grafenwoehr, Hammelburg etc,) , and because they remained part of the Allied occupation
force, they still had just as many security tasks to carry out in Berlin as part of their daily schedule.
The thing that remained the same, right up to the end, was the striking friendliness of the Americans
whenever you bumped into them.
They no longer greeted us with a "Hi" or a "Hello"! Now they called out a clear, polite and audible
"Guten Tag" or "Auf Wiedersehen"! Many of them had learned to speak German over the years. Others had even
married Germans girls.
On one occasion, I was in the middle of a conversation with some soldiers, when a forester's vehicle pulled
up next to us. The driver got out and was greeted by the GIs in a friendly manner, just as I had been.
But he just yelled at them and showered them with offensive words. According to him, they had yet again
snapped off too many branches. Would he have tried this with the Soviets? Rather taken aback, they watched
the vehicle drive off again. The German proverb "you can't plane wood without wood shavings falling"
obviously didn't apply to them!
How is an army, acting as a freedom guarantor in a strange, walled-in city, supposed to carry out practices
when it is not allowed to drive its vehicles, fire its weapons, or snap off branches from a few trees?
Even in the 1980s, any unauthorized persons seen going too close to the practice area on the Russians'
training grounds in the GDR were shot at with live ammunition.
Did this forester, or simply "forest employee", of about about forty years of age, forget that he might
not even be alive if the Americans hadn't made it possible for his parents to survive the war? It could
all have been quite different. I was ashamed by his outrageous behavior and I apologized to the soldiers.
Wherever there are maneuvers taking place, inevitably there is going to be damage done. This was and still
is an unfortunate side effect. You can try to limit the damage, but you can never avoid it entirely. It was
the Americans more than anyone else who, in the last ten years before their withdrawal, attached great
importance to avoiding damage to the Grunewald. Unlike in previous years, they had long stopped digging out
foxholes and had drastically reduced the use of tracked vehicles in the Grunewald. But even that wasn't
enough for their adversaries. In particular circles here in Berlin, it was obviously the "in thing" to be
principally anti-American. A large proportion of the younger generation, who were clearly in their
"everything sucks" phase and hadn't read their history books properly, was convinced that everything that
was American should be seen as negative. It was embarrassing and disgraceful, the way in which sometimes
very young and inexperienced U.S. soldiers were treated in public.
Suddenly, nobody thought to thank them anymore. Why should they anyway? The ones that shouted the loudest
were predominantly born in the years when everything was freely available again to consumers. Thanks to the
allied presence they never had to do without. They were spared want, and above all poverty. The Americans
never exploited their right to occupation to the extent that the Berliners had to feel particularly
disadvantaged. On the contrary, they usually helped wherever they could. Again and again I was given reason
to believe this, for one day, a new challenge arose for me on a professional level.
We need a 'Golf Papa'