50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall
Stars & Stripes has spent a lot of column inches on the anniversary of the East Germans’ Berlin Wall which was begun fifty years ago yesterday. The East German wall played a big part of my nine years in Germany in the 80s and you can read 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 experience during their border patrols.
Category: Historical
Sadly, those who lived through such a dangerous and totalitarian period in East Germany’s history have not learned the lessons of freedom and pine for the day of “benevolent” Soviet dictators:
http://news.yahoo.com/berlin-mayor-criticizes-nostalgia-berlin-wall-124850206.html
There was an article on MSNBC.com the other day. In the first photo’s caption it states that in part the wall was built “to prevent mass illegal emigration to the West.” I haven’t quite figured out how moving from one part of your country to another part of the same country would be illegal immigration.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44060292/
Bill. I wish Mexico had that kind of immigration resolve.
One of the earliest memories my wife has as her family was planning to return to the States is the start of the wall. It was a pretty big deal to all the Americans serving in Berlin. My mother-in-law was pissed because she could no longer sneak into East Berlin for shopping deals. They were part of the Berlin “brigade”. Dad, a major, was the American doctor at Spandau Prison, among other duties. He must have ten thousand 35mm slides of their time there. I get a lot of dirty looks every Christmas when I ask him to show them. Ha, ha. I like them though. It was a time when America really seemed to know what it was doing.
They say “immigration” because they want to show similarity with the completely unrelated desire to put a wall on our southern border, but in all actuality the Berlin Wall was to prevent “emigration”…
Thanks for the post, John, really enjoyed reading your thoughts and experiences and viewing the pics. Loved reading the comments. All brought back memories of some of the best of times and some of the worst of times that spanned twenty years of my life. Years lived that are better than gold to me for the lessons learned about freedom and the opportunity to know those that understand the cost of human liberty.
Ahhhhh…the good ol’ days when all we had to worry about was the Reds.
I spent about 2 years in West Berlin and got to see the “Wall” many times. I even got drunk and went a pissed on it so I could tell my kids one day:”I got drunk and pissed on the Berlin Wall.”
I did tell them when The Wall came down…I’m so proud (that I pissed on The Wall.)
you know I’m too young to remember this. But I did listen to my dad describe the “nuke drills”, and wondering if he had enough time to get home to be with his family. Strangely I think the world is MORE dangerous now, though Americans are less cognizant of the threats.
I was a bomber mechanic(B-47)in SAC in those days. I very well remember the building of the wall, a little American-Soviet Union dust up over the Suez canal in ’56, Lebanon in ’58, Cuba and Kruschev’s missiles and seeing hundreds of Green Berets among others coming thru Hickam AFB headed to Vietnam. The 25th ID getting jungle training on the “Big Island”, Hawaii. And a whole lot more. Those weren’t the good ol’ days.
I did two tours in Germany and went from Nellingen on a border tour out of HOF. I was in East Berlin the month before the wall fell. On heck of an experience. Ahh the good old days.
Charlie