Twenty years gone
It’s hard to believe that it’s been gone almost as long as it existed, but today marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the scar that marred Europe’s maps and landscape for more than a quarter century. Most of the world leaders are gathering in Berlin this week to celebrate the end of that monument to the imprisonment of the human spirit.
After 28 years as prisoners of their own country, euphoric East Germans streamed to checkpoints and rushed past bewildered border guards, many falling tearfully into the arms of West Germans welcoming them on the other side.
The fall of the Wall sent shockwaves around the world that night, abruptly ending the Cold War and paving the way for the unification of Germany, which had been divided since the end of World War II.
“The destruction of the Iron Curtain on November 9, 1989 is still the most remarkable political event of most people’s lifetimes: it set free millions of individuals and it brought to an end a global conflict that threatened nuclear annihilation,” British weekly The Economist said this week.
Well, not all of the world’s leaders will be there – ours won’t. But then, he has no sense of history that doesn’t relate directly to him.
Anyway, I wrote a post about one of my experiences on the border in the early 80s along with some pictures, in case you missed it back then. Here are some more of my pictures from that thankfully bygone era;
Category: Historical, Military issues
Very cool, Jonn. I have a piece of the wall that my mother brought back on one of her trips to her home to visit relatives. I remember her calling me when the news first broke that East Germany had fallen and people were standing on the wall. Of course, I had to flip on tv to watch it, I could hear the the emotion in my moms voice as we were watching it together, yet we were 3000 miles apart.
Jonn…You’re inspiring me to post mine…I have a few. Your are more somber. It was amazing to see and experience. In this context, I fully realized the meaning of freedom.
The people in the east never looked at me directly, and nobody really smiled.
Our Pied Piper is a fucking loser.
[…] This ain’t Hell points out that the Berlin Wall is 20 years gone […]
Can’t show up in Berlin, nope. The focus wouldn’t be on the 0, it’d be somewhere else, so gotta bypass that thing.
Defend is right, he’s a fucking loser.
Not sure how but I missed your original post. So I went back and read it. Gave me chills and made me so damn proud of you guys!
Reminded me of a few stories from late summer of 1980 before the wall and the Iron Curtain fell. I spent time in Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia. I remember taking a hydrofoil down the Danube from Vienna into Bratislava. There was a man on the boat with us whose sole purpose was to attempt to find his family in Czechoslovakia. His story was chilling and still tugs at my heart. He was concerned about his family but also that he would be captured if found out. I never saw him again once we departed the boat. He should have been on the return trip with us but didn’t show up. I still wonder about him.
I remember the armed guards in the towers, those that followed us everywhere ducking into doorways as I turned back to look at/for them; the school yards that were surrounded by fences topped with razor wire – even the elementary schools. So many stories and experiences that opened the eyes of this, admittedly at the time, spoiled rotten 20 year old American.
Too bad you weren’t able to stay in touch with that Private. I’m sure he thinks of you all more often than you all think of him. Well done and thank you for sharing your story and pictures.
I remember.
I was stationed in Germany in the late 70s-early 80s, with the 614 Maint Co,, 2nd Spt Bde, with the 2nd ACR, in Merrill Barracks (Sud Kacerne), Nuernberg.
And there was, at one point, an obligatory trip to the border to see the sights of what we might be up against. Eye-opening & chilling. The towers. The fences & walls. Us looking at them looking at us.
Thanks for the posting & the pictures. Very sobering.
On Wednesday, a caller on Rush’s show suggested that the missing “leader” was snubbing the celebrations out of a small-minded grudge because PM Merkel refused to let him use the Brandenburg Gate for a campaign rally during his campaign.
Jonn,
This post and the preceeding one brought up lots of old memories for me. I was in HHC 1st BDE, 3rd AD from ’88 to ’90. The 11th ACR had the Fulda region but they knew they were just a speedbump and a smoke alarm if the GFSG decided to roll over the border (let’s see how may folks remember what THAT acronym stood for), our unit were the real responders if it did happen. I did several tours up at OP Alpha in the Bad Hersfeld area and will never forget the sound a Hind gunship makes or how amazing it was to climb the Brandenburg Tur during New Year’s 1990. Need to go back someday.
The good old days.
The Fulda gap in winter………….
I think it is funny how many Germans wish the wall would go back up.
Thanks for the photos John. I was in the 3 ID in Kitzingen 81-83. Those photos brought back a lot of memories. I had to go dig out my own and show them to my young children who simply couldn’t visualize the concept of “The Wall”.
People will always want to be free.
As a Berlin Brigade vet, it’s hard to describe to those who were never there the true feeling of the Wall. Thanks for the pics. I still consider myself to a Berliner.
http://lupussolusluna.blogspot.com/2009/11/ich-bin-ein-berlinerinternational.html
[…] about one of my experiences, if you missed it when I posted it more than two years ago. There are more pictures here. All of those pictures are pictures I used to train my troops to identify what they’d see and […]