Honor Page 26

When Berlin was divided into four sectors at the end of World War II my home was located in East Berlin, in the sector commonly known as the "Russian Sector". However, my mother's job was in West Berlin with a firm that had been her employers since long before the war. Both my parents, although divorced, now lived under Russian occupation and had resigned themselves to life under Communist rule. My mother decided to defect to the West, even if my father did not share her attitude. She started smuggling personal items across the border by placing them on the bottom of her purse or by hiding them under heavy winter clothing. Then came July 17, 1953 that brought an uprising of workers and students in East Berlin. They fought Russian tanks with rocks to no avail. All exits from East Berlin were sealed off and my mother could not return home after work. I was only 6 years old and scared that I would never see her again. After the uprising was quelled the Russians relaxed their grip on the border crossings and allowed people to return to their places of residence. My mother immediately went to the local police station to request a day pass for West Berlin, enabling her to cross the border at a certain checkpoint on a daily basis. She had to prove to the police that she was indeed working in West Berlin and had done so for a number of years. Her request was granted. Now, a few days later, it was June and the days were hot. Nevertheless my mother dressed me in triple clothing and let me accompany her to work. I was a skinny little thing so the ruse worked. The East Berlin Police checked her papers and asked why she brought her daughter along. "To visit friends while I am at work" was my mother's reply.

bergie

They let us pass. Once we had crossed the border into West Berlin we took a bus to the refugee center to request political asylum. The lines were long and we waited our turn in this terrible heat. The West Berlin Police asked my mother a lot of questions, made her fill out stacks of papers, and finally issued her a new West Berlin identity card. We were free.
Thanks goodness my mother had arranged to rent a room from friends at work and we had a place to live. That was more than most refugees had; they stayed in Quonset huts until they could relocate. So far I had lived only in a single-family residence, but now my home was in a five-story apartment building (without an elevator!). I had never seen so many stairs and promptly got lost on my first day, but kind neighbors returned me to my mother. Being a single mother and a refugee did have some advantages. My mother applied for help at the Social Service Office and soon we received a CARE package from America. It contained Cheddar Cheese, powdered milk, shortening and Spam. To this day I love powdered milk! Once I started to learn English we sent the donor family a "thank you" note and began a wonderful pen-pal relationship. Where would I be without the wonderful generosity of my newly found American friends. The Red Cross also put me on a list for summer vacation spots, when American planes transported children to West Germany. In 1956 I spent 6 weeks at a children's home in the Harz mountains and the following year I lived with a farm family. On the plane the American soldiers gave us chewing gum to pop our ears. We loved the gum and adored the soldiers. I was only 8 years old when I first fell in love with them. Many, many years later I fell in love again - with an GI of the United States Army, Don "Bergie" Stanley. I met him at the public beach of Strandbad Wannsee.

In the beginning, our C - Company had many commanders. One day we have got a great C.O. , Arthur E Barker Jr., he came from A- Company. When he led a Company you knew it. He had a great respect from the lowest private to our highest enlisted man. Our Company Commander sometimes tried to find some candies for our little friends and most of us would start laughing about it. When the food came out to the field we would share it and we sometimes wondered if the children were warm.

Charlie Company was in parades most of the time. The first parade I was in, was 'Night People' which they made a movie of which Gregory Peck was an actor. Some scenes were taken on '4 Ring' which was right next to our barracks.
The Saturdays were great to go to Steglitz, going to the local department stores and looking at the Berliners who reminded us of home going to see what was being sold and of course looking at the pretty girls. A street car, called Strassenbahn, has its stop next to the main gate and brought us quickly downtown.

The Berlin of 1953 had no infamous Wall and no Checkpoint Charlie. The American Sector of Berlin received most of the people crossing over. Many people would go back and forth to the East and most of them worked in West- Berlin. The main transportation of the folks was the bike. The Eastern part of Berlin, or Soviet sector, lacked heat. I never forget the darkness when you got near the Eastern part of the City. Christmas was a lot different then the Berlin of today with all the beautiful lights. The City in those days had very few Christmas decorations only. That was quite different when I returned in 1998 and I just had to see the Eastern part of Berlin with a lot of restaurants and hotels. The soldiers in Berlin especially the ones in my squad lived through hard times in the U.S. and we grew up during W.W.II and the depression so most of them realized what the Berliner was going through. Of couse we didn't have Russian breathing down our neck. The people of Berlin were alway in my prayers. The Ku- Damm was just starting to open stores and they were just starting to build at the church Kaiser Wilhelm.

I have to go back to the Christmas of 1953 when we entertained an orphanage.It was on a Saturday when the Co. Commander asked that if we would mind staying to entertain some of the orphans. So everyone in my squad said fine and we all did it. The problem was the children that we entertained that day were crippled but we bought cheer to them This was back in 1953 and to this day I sometimes around Christmas wonder what happened to those great children.

I also experienced the Army duty train. From station Lichterfelde (RTO) it ran in and out of Berlin to Frankfurt at 7:30 at night had to keep all curtains down and I had always to make sure to have the right papers. To keep the zone autobahn to West-Germany open our trucks sometimes had to ride empty. Another kind of Cold War 'ceremony'. Who knew the Soviets, also knew that they sometimes loved to cause trouble and problems.

I also went to NCO school at Andrews Barracks. We had a great officer as our instructor, an Lt. Wardinski from A Company and a good friend of Lt. Barker.

When in 1955 I left Berlin in a big snow storm, I was happy but I always wondered how it would be one beautiful City. This was, as told before, at the time of the Cold War. Having served in Berlin I always followed the news. It was sad when in 1961 suddenly the Wall went up but happy to see in 1989 when it finally came down.

Where I live we do have some people from Berlin who are living in our area.

In Summer 2006, I've been in Berlin the last time. (Veterans reunion) I'm happy and looking forward to come back in August this year.

I was inducted into the U.S. Army on 27 March 1969 at Detroit Michigan and sent for Basic Training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, which commenced on 7 April 1969 and was compeleted on 29 May 1969. At the beginning of BCT I remember an interview that I had in which I was asked where I would like to serve. Immediately out of my mouth came, "Germany". After Basic Training I was sent to Clerk School Training at Fort Knox which began on 10 June 1969. Upon completion of clerical training for Personnel Specialist in mid July I was sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, for Medical Records Specialist training which started on 18 July. After finishing my Medical Records Schooling at Ft. Sam Houston in late September 1969, followed by a couple weeks leave, I boarded a chartered airliner with many other GI's and flown to Frankfurt. There I waited at the 21st Replacement Station for over a week pulling work details while waitng assignment somewhere in Europe. Most of the guys that I arrived with, including two from my training class who preceeded me to Berlin by several days, received assignment before I did. On the morning of 21 October 1969, I was called out of formation at the 21st Replacement Station and told to report to the assignment office. There I was asked for my military ID and told that it would be returned to me the next morning after I arrived in West Berlin. That was how I was informed as to my being assigned to the Berlin Brigade.

That afternoon I was taken to the Frankfurt railway station and given my ticket to Berlin. 8.30pm I boarded my train and left for my Berlin Brigade assignment at the U.S. Army 279th Station Hospital. On the train I shared a sleeping compartment with an U.S. Air Force enlisted man. I slept through the Russian checkpoint stop at Helmstedt where travel documents, ID and Flag Orders were checked by the Russians. The Duty Train arrived in West Berlin (RTO) at 7am. There I was met by a Specialist who took me to the 279th Medical Hospital, on Strasse "Unter den Eichen" where I was stationed for the next fifteen months.

My first days in Berlin were ones of drawing field equipment, weapon assignment and settling into my room in the Medical Barracks with my two roommates, Bruce Egbert and Walter Allen. Both my first roommates were Medical Records classmates and had preceeded me by a couple of days to Berlin from the 21st Replacement Station in Frankfurt. We worked together in the Registrar Division. We were allowed to furnish our third floor barracks room, with its own balcony, with a few scatter rugs and small items of furniture like bedstands, writing tables, and chairs as long as the items are in servicable condition. At the U.S. Army Hospital I was assigned to the Registrar Division which was under the command of Captain John S. Hart, Chief Registrar. The Registrar Division was divided into sections; Administration, Admissions and Dispositions, Medical Records, and Statistics. My day job was in the Medical Records section where I and several others were responsible for the final compilation, medical coding, and filing of the inpatient hosptial records of discharged patients. When assigned I was also responsible for pulling on-call duty in the Admissions Office on nights, weekends and holidays. All the lower ranking enlisted personnel in the Registrar Division were rotated through on-call duty on a regular basis. This entailed carrying a communications beeper on your person during your on-call duty and being ready to respond immediately by going to the Admissions Office and admit a patient into the hospital. I could go to my barracks room and sleep during on-call duty but if the beeper went off in the middle of the night I had to get up, put on my uniform and head over to the Hospital A&D office to carry out my duties. The on-call person also was responsible for completing the Admissions and Dispostions Report for that day which recorded what patients had been admitted and what patients had been discharged, transferred in or out of the hospital, or had died. This was before we had computers and word processing programs and was typed on an electric typewriter using a stencil which was then reproduced on a mimeograph machine. Typing these stencils was a tedious, time consuming task. If you did make a mistake it could only be corrected using correction fluid and then carefully retyping exactly over the mistake. It was a task I liked the least. If the A&D Report had to be redone by the day shift because you screwed up you could expect a chewing out to be sure.

On a Sunday, Walt, Bruce and I walked to downtown Berlin about two and half miles from the hospital. Because no department stores were open we window shopped followed by lunch in a resturant. We spoke no German and the waitress spoke no English. Fortunately the manager spoke some English. One word we recongized on the menu was "Goulash," which we ordered thinking it was macoroni and beef. It turned out to be a Hungarian Goulash of boiled potatoes with pot roast, and included pickles and lettace for garnish. The entrée was preceeded by chicken soup. Coke or beer was the offered beverages. We finished off our lunch with sliced pears for dessert. That was my first meal in a Berlin resturant. We left a 4 Mark tip for the waitress because of her patience. After lunch we continued our walk, arrived at the Ku-damm and saw for the first time the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. That afternnoon was our first viewing of the infamous Berlin Wall.

In a letter to my family I wrote, "I was within ten yards of it. It's solid concrete and about 10 or 12 feet high". By this time it was 3.30pm and we were about 5 miles away from the hospital compound. Because the Army dress code did not permit us to be roaming about Berlin after 5pm without a shirt and tie or turtleneck with a sport-coat we had to catch a cab back to the hospital, telling the driver to take us to the "U.S. Army Krankenhaus".

Shortly after arriving in Berlin, I purchased a Japanese TOPCON 35mm camera.
With it I photographed the U.S. Army Hospital compound and all my Berlin touring adventures.

If I was not out exploring Berlin with my GI friends during my time off work I spent a good deal of my free time reading and listening to my own collection of recorded music or to the Armed Forces Network radio - Berlin. We generally had Armed Forces Radio tuned in on a radio in our office during work hours. AFN Berlin helped to bring a bit of the good old U.S. of A. into our lives with its mix of its own original programing and syndicated programs from the states. There was "Weekend World" hosted by Spc. Bill Swisher from Frankfurt, "Time and Changes" hosted by Spc. Henry Michael from Berlin, and "Stateside Sound Survey" hosted by Army Sgt. Jim Collinson. Army Sgt. Bill Swindoll was also one of AFN-Berlin's on air personalities. On the Halloween weekend of 1970 "Weekend World" programed a Halloween show.

On the Holidays, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, our Mess Hall always put on a special American holiday meal to which the civilian workers and their families were invited. I remember at my first Mess Hall Christmas dinner the many children who were at the dinning table. One young German boy was dressed as an American cowboy. German children were fascinated by American cowboys and Indians.

Shortly after I was stationed in Berlin I was sent to Driver's School even though I was already licensed to drive in the States. However, I had never been trained to drive a manual shift and my superiors had the idea that they could turn me into an ambulance driver. The first step was to train me to drive a manual shift sedan. My instructer was a patient German man and I was licensed to drive a sedan by early December of 1969. For a reason I never learned or enquired about I was never trained any further. My inclination was reinforced when I was in an accident while riding as a passenger assistant to the medic in an Army ambulance while we speeded to pick up an unconscious boy. We were hit in the rear by a semi-truck whose driver somehow had not seen our emergency lights flashing or heard our siren wailing. We avoided colliding with any other cars and any serious injury but the ambulance was no longer drivable. The MP who had been escorting us took me back to the hospital where I was still "On call" to admit patients.

In another letter I sent home to my family I wrote: "Bob Hope is coming to Berlin to do a show for the U.S.O. and I hope to go and see it". The G.I.'s favorite comedian Bob Hope did bring his U.S.O. troup to West Berlin - the first stop of his 1969 U.S.O. Christmas tour that went on to Italy, Asia, and Vietnam and I was able to attend. MG General Robert G Fergusson gave a welcome and West Berlin Mayor Klaus Schuetz presented Hope with half a key to the divided city. Old Ski-nose himself took to the stage at the Berlin Deutschlandhalle wearing a U.S. Army brimmed service hat carrying his golf-club and began with his opening monologue. He began by saying of the Deutschlandhalle, "It's sorta like Madison Square Garden with sauerkraut. I'm thrilled to be here in Berlin; one of our most famous snow jobs. It's always fun coming to Berlin. It's the only airport that you fly through the downtown area"! Speaking of his flight through the air corridor he spoofed, "The air corridor is a narrow strip through East Germany policed on both sides by Russian Migs. I don't know how many there were. It's hard to see from under the seat. I must say, our pilot made a beautiful landing in somebody's back yard. I think they call it Tempelhof".

On our hospital compound we had an NCO-Enlisted Open Mess called the Caduceus Club, named after the medical symbol for healing, the snake wrapped around a pole. There, after a day's work, we would shoot the breeze and unwind over our favorite mixed drink or a beer. I on occasion would enjoy one of their famous hamburgers. Once when I was sitting at the bar having a beer and a burger, a British soldier set at the stool beside me. We struck up a conversation and he said he was hungry and wanted something typically American. The Caduceus Club was noted for its hamburgers so I suggested he might want to order that which he did. It was served to him in American fashion without any knife or fork. He was a bit disconcerted about eating his burger and fries with his fingers, so he asked for a fork and knife which was supplied. He said he did enjoy his burger even though he found our way of eating it with our fingers somewhat impolite.

All of Berlin Brigade service personnel, including us who worked at the Army Hospital, were subject to Alerts. When an alert was called I and my colleagues would draw our assigned weapon and battle gear and continue with our daily duties. My standard alert joke was: "If the Russians come over the wall I will throw my typewriter at them". We Medical Records Clerks called ourselves, "Remington Raiders". On one occasion during my 1970 year in Berlin as part of a Brigade wide exercise our hospital company had to go to the Grunewald and set up a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH). We actually had to treat any "casualties" that came in from the "war games," which were few and not at all serious which was just as well for the only physician we had at the MASH was a dentist. The other Army physicans were kept back at the real hospital where they were needed to treat patients. This was also the year that the movie MASH, which inspired the television series, was released and I recall watching at one of the Berlin Brigade theaters.
I only remember one major inspection while I served in Berlin at the hospital. We had to lay out all of our military gear on the bed and on the floor in a specific order to show that we had everything that was required and that it was clean and serviceable. We also had to have our both our civilian and military lockers open for inspection. It was quite an ordeal to get ready for. It was inspected while we were at work and I passed.

The hospital compound that I remember had a long heated and enclosed corridor that connected the main building of the hospital to another building to protect patients and staff from inclement weather. I have a clear memory of encountering one of the German civilian employees while walking through this corridor. I was whistling what I knew as the hymn tune "Austria" which I was unaware was also the tune of the German national anthem, "Deutsche Nationalhymne" and knowing only the English hymn "Glorious Things of You are Spoken." As I walked and whistled this civilian man was walking toward. As we passed he heard me whistling and gave me this strange puzzled look. Later I learned the significance to him of that tune. He probably wondered why this American soldier was whistling a patriotic hymn of Germany. During my 15 months, in July of 1970, there was a Change of Command at the U.S. Army Hospital, it included all the typical pomp and symbolic ceremony and even the Berlin Brigade commander was present.

On Veteran's Day, 11 November 1969, I had the day off so I took my new camera and headed for downtown Berlin for my second sightseeing tour of Berlin. I walked to the Truman Hall PX that is about a mile from the hospital compound. Then, for the first time, took the U- Bahn to the Europa Center. After wandering around the Europa Center we headed to the Brandenburg Gate to see the Wall. On the way we stopped at the Victory Tower (Siegessaeule) and climbed to the observation ring where I made some great photos of the Berlin skyline. On the way to the Wall we saw the Russian Memorial that was inside the western sector. At the wall from an observation platform we could see over the wall where I photographed the East German VOPO guards. From there we took a cab back to the Europa Center, had a coffee and I took a BVG "Doppeldecker" bus back to the hospital compound.