Crossing the Grenz

The border with its many twists and turns can be a tricky place to navigate even with the various border markers. If anyone spent time patrolling the border it’s a safe bet to say they probably crossed the border at least once into East Germany inadvertently. It happened to me, and thanks to an alert fellow soldier I avoided capture by a couple of GAKs.
 

Once upon a time.........
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 The area behind me is a peninsula of the DDR. Unknown to me, the border made a right turn at this spot.

 I was observing minefield operations with my driver, Private First Class Stephen Perry, when I decided to walk further down the border to get a better picture angle. There was a tremendous amount of activity in the minefield so there were three pairs of GAKs stationed about 50 meters apart guarding the engineers who were probably to preoccupied with staying alive in the minefields than escaping.  As I walked down the border I was careful to stay on my side of the border poles since the guards were watching my every move. Just a few months before a member of the American Military Liaison Mission in East Germany had been shot and killed by a Soviet guard in or near a Russian military base. I didn’t want to become another Cold War casualty. As I took my stroll along the border Perry remained parked on a small hill watching the activity from there.  

As I walked along the border I stopped and took some pictures of the GAKs and moved a little further down the border.  Prior to continuing my journey I stopped at a border pole to make sure I was on course. Just ahead was one more pole where the border made a left turn.  After making sure I was on course I proceed to cover the last 30 yards before the border turned. While I was walking I suddenly heard the horn on my jeep honking repeatedly. I quickly turned my head over my right shoulder towards the noise and at that moment spotted another border pole behind me to the right.  It immediately hit me I was walking across an L-shaped peninsula of East German territory with GAKs in the close vicinity. The two poles that marked the peninsula were hidden by brush from the last spot where I had paused, but from my new vantage point in East Germany I could see the tops of the poles rising above the bushes! I immediately turned in a smooth motion so as not attract the guards' attention and made a gradual curve back to the west side of the border. I had hoped that from their position the GAKs would not be able to tell I had crossed and violated the sacred sovereignty of the DDR. I was wrong.

About the time I had crossed back across the border my jeep came rumbling across a freshly plowed field with an irate West German farmer in close pursuit.  Perry, the ever watchful and dedicated soldier he was, had saved my sorry butt by honking his horn to alert me and then came charging across the field like a true Cavalry Trooper to rescue another trooper in distress. Lesser souls have suggested perhaps PFC Perry just wanted to get some close-up pictures of the Troop Commander being hauled off to some East German jail!  

As Perry drove up I threw my camera in the back and told him to get the hell out of there. I need not have wasted my breath. No sooner was one leg in the jeep than Perry hit the accelerator and we bounced across the field leaving one angry farmer in a hail of dirt and drowned out German curse words.  Perry then informed me that the GAKs had witnessed the entire mishap and had dropped their radios and ran towards me in an effort to capture me. Had it not been for PFC Perry honking his horn, the GAKs would have apprehended me before I had reached the other side. Needless to say, the incident scared me so much that I didn’t go near the border for a week.  

To this day the story brings a smile to my face as I remember this young, skinny kid that came to my rescue and kept me from being hauled off to some East German hell-hole by the border guards.

Stephen Perry, my Cold War guardian angel,  currently lives in the Phoenix area and is producing a documentary on the Iron Curtain.