Part 25 (1/2)

TUESDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 24, 1961.

Secretary Rusk was irritated that General Clay was providing him with un-solicited advice on how to conduct diplomacy with Moscow, then unilaterally making deployment decisions at Berlinas border connected to those suggestions. On Ruskas behalf, Berlin task force chief Foy Kohler called Allan Lightner at nine in the evening German time to get him back on the State Department reservation and to pull him out from under General Clayas seductive spell.

Speaking to Lightner, Kohler shot down Clayas advice that Rusk should use the unfolding border dispute as leverage for negotiations with Moscow. Beyond that, he reminded a defensive Lightner that he reported to Rusk and not to Clay. In his memo to Rusk afterward that reported on his chat with Lightner, Kohler complained, aThe conversation was almost entirely in double-talk.a Lightner a.s.sured Kohler that his role in the border-crossing incident two days earlier had been aentirely unexpected and rather embarra.s.sing.a In all his life as a diplomat, Lightner had never encountered so much media attention, ranging from sneering insinuations in the communist press that he was crossing to meet with his mistress to excessive praise in the West Berlin press that the top American in Berlin was finally demonstrating U.S. t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

Kohler joked that Lightneras name had become aa household word in the U.S.a overnight, which in the publicity-shy State Department wasnat a compliment. What bothered Kohler more, he said, was that Clay had suspended the border crossings without Was.h.i.+ngtonas clearance, which Kohler called aa serious tactical mistake.a He believed the Soviet officialas eventual appearance at the border crossing on October 22 had achieved the U.S. purpose of showing that it remained the Soviets and not the East Germans who would guarantee U.S. free pa.s.sage in East Berlin.

In putting a stop to the military escorts, Lightner apologized to his superiors in Was.h.i.+ngton that he had been aoverruled by a higher authority,a namely Clay. At the same time, he wanted to know what Rusk thought of Clayas ingenious idea of calling in the Soviet amba.s.sador and informing him that the U.S. would refuse to negotiate with Russia until the East Germans canceled their expanded border inspections.

Kohler said Clayas proposal was being considered but that many other factors would play into the decision of when and how to talk to the Russians. Thus, Rusk wanted Clay to resume his probes with aboth armed and unarmed escorts of U.S. vehiclesa if the East Germans continued to refuse American rights of free pa.s.sage.

With that, General Clay had clear instructions to resume his escorts. The slap on Clayas hand, however, was just as unmistakable. Rusk wanted him to stay out of U.S.a”Soviet diplomacy, which was none of his business. For whatever reason, Clayas superiors were encouraging his more a.s.sertive course but refusing to connect it with a more a.s.sertive diplomacy.

The outcome was destined to be an unhappy one.

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE, WEST BERLIN.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 27, 1961.

United States Army First Lieutenant Vern Pike had two concerns as he looked down the enemy tank barrels, adjusted his green army helmet with the bold white aMPa emblazoned across its front, and ensured his M14 rifle had its safety off, a bullet in its chamber, and its bayonet unsheathed.

Foremost in his mind, the twenty-four-year-old U.S. military police officer was worried for his wife, Renny, who at age twenty was increasingly pregnant with their twins. Pike had decided against sending her home for Christmas, as the young couple didnat want to be separated for that long, but now that decision looked irresponsible.

That was due to his second fear. Pike knew from his training that the scene unfolding before him could escalate to wara”perhaps even a nuclear onea”and take with it him, his young bride, and their unborn twins, not to mention a good portion of the planet. All it would take was one nervous U.S. or Soviet trigger finger, he thought to himself.

It was just past nine in the evening, and ten American M48 Patton tanks were poised at the Friedrichstra.s.se crossing, facing an identical number of Soviet T-54 tanks about a hundred paces away. The showdown had begun to unfold several hours earlier in the afternoon when U.S. tanks had clanked up to the border as they had the two previous days to back up what were already becoming routine military escorts of American civilian cars into East Berlin.

At precisely 4:45 p.m., after another successful and uneventful operation, U.S. commanders had ordered the American tanks withdrawn to Tempelhof Air Base. Pike, whose military police platoon supervised Checkpoint Charlie, then took a cigarette break with Major Thomas Tyree, who commanded the tank group. From the warmth of a drugstore on the corner of Friedrichstra.s.se and Zimmerstra.s.se, they looked out the window toward the East and turned to each other in disbelief.

aDo you see what I see?a said Tyree to Pike.

aSir, those are tanks!a Pike responded with alarm. aAnd they arenat ours.a He calculated that they were no more than seventy to a hundred yards from where they stood.

Though they looked to be newly built Soviet T-54 tanks, their national markings were obscured. All the more mysterious, the military personnel driving them and manning their guns appeared to be wearing unmarked black uniforms. If they were Sovieta”and it was hard to imagine they were anything elsea”they were preserving deniability.

aVern,a said Tyree, aI donat know whose tanks those are, but get the h.e.l.l to Tempelhof and get me my tanks back, quick as you can.a aYes, sir,a said Pike, glancing at his watch. The U.S. tanks had left ten minutes earlier, so it would not take long for him to catch them. He jumped into his military police car, a white Ford, and raced through Friday rush-hour traffic, weaving in and out with his siren blaring and his agumball machine,a as he called his rooftop light, rotating. He caught up with the tanks just as they were arriving at their base.

Pike shouted out his window at the lead tank, which was driven by his Berlin neighbor, Captain Bob Lamphir. aSir, weave got trouble at Checkpoint Charlie; follow me and letas get back there as fast as we can go.a aWhoopee!a yelped Lamphir as he ordered all the tanks to turn around and head back to the border. Pike later recalled how the thrill of impending danger surged through him: aHere we are at five oaclock in the afternoon rush hour on an October Friday in Berlin, racing down Mariendamm towards Checkpoint Charlie with my little MP car going bebop, bebop out in the front. And every living Berliner within eyesight gets the h.e.l.l out of the way.a Just before the American tanks had returned to the scene at 5:25 p.m., the Soviet tanks had withdrawn to parking areas on a vacant lot near East Berlinas main boulevard of Unter den Linden. If not for all the potential peril, the scene had the atmosphere of a French farce, with the Soviet actors rumbling behind the curtain just as their American counterparts rushed onto the stage. In expectation that their opponents might return, the U.S. tanks remained and arranged themselves in defensive positions.

Some forty minutes later, at just past six in the evening, what appeared to be Russian tanks returned and a.s.sembled themselves with guns pointed across the line. A Was.h.i.+ngton Post reporter who had gathered at the crossing with dozens of other correspondents announced it was athe first time that the forces of the two wartime allies, now the worldas biggest powers, had met in direct and hostile confrontation.a In reference to the lack of national markings, CBS Radio correspondent Daniel Schorr called them, ato borrow a term from Orwellathe un-tanks. Or we may one day hear that they were just Russian-speaking volunteers who had bought some surplus tanks and come down on their own.a Schorr reported on the curious scene: In the West, the American GIs sat atop their tanks, smoking, chatting, and eating dinner from mess kits. West Berliners, held back behind rope barriers, bought pretzel sticks from street vendors, and presented flowers to GIs. The Western scene was all lit by enormous floodlights beamed from the communist sidea”an effort to intimidate using superior wattage. On the Eastern side, the apparently Russian tanks sat in darkness with their black-uniformed crews. aWhat a picture for the history books!a Schorr exclaimed.

Clay required confirmation for his masters in Was.h.i.+ngton that they were Soviet. It was not an academic point: for the U.S., the danger of a confrontation with Soviet tanks was that it could turn into a general war. East German tanks posed another sort of difficulty, because their deployment was prohibited in East Berlin under the four-power agreements.

Under orders to ascertain the tanksa origin, Pike and his driver Sam McCart climbed into an Army sedan and weaved through the barricades and down a side street well past the tanks, where they parked and then walked back. It was part of the surreal nature of the showdown that both sides continued to respect military freedom of movement at the border, so Pike could drive through without impediment.

Pike was surprised at the tanksa illogical two-three-two formation, which made it impossible for the rear tanks to fire upon the enemy. Beyond that, they also were making themselves easy targets. Pike walked up to the rear tank and saw nothing to help his investigation: ano Russians, no East Germans, no one.a So he climbed onto the tank and down into the driveras compartment. There he confirmed it was Soviet by the Cyrillic script on the controls and the Red Army newspaper by the brake handle, which Pike could identify, given his smattering of Russian. aHey, McCart, look at this,a he said as he climbed out of the tank and showed him the newspaper that he had taken as evidence.

The tanksa crews, about fifty men in all, were sitting on the ground a short distance away, apparently getting briefed on their mission. Pike walked up close enough to hear they were speaking Russian. When one of the Soviet officers spotted him, Pike turned to McCart and said, aLetas get the h.e.l.l out of here.a After driving back, they reported to Colonel Sabolyk, who was Pikeas superior, that the tanks were Soviet. When Pike explained how he had found out and showed the newspaper, Sabolyk said in shock, aYou did what?a The disbelieving colonel put Pike on the phone to the emergency operations center, which connected him with Kennedyas special representative so he could hear for himself. aWhose tanks are they?a Clay asked.

aThey are Soviet, sir,a Pike said.

aHow do you know?a When Pike told him, Clay was silent on the other end of the line. Pike felt as though he could hear him thinking, aOh, G.o.d, a lieutenant has started World War Three.a Pike had dared to undertake the mission partly because he felt young and invulnerable, but also because by then American soldiers thought little of Soviet discipline, morale, or military capability. Though GIs knew they were outnumbered, they also felt superior. When driving into West Berlin on the Helmstedt Autobahn from West Germany, Pike had seen Russian grunts hawking their belt buckles, caps, and even Soviet medals as souvenirs in exchange for Playboy magazines, chewing gum, ink pens, or especially cigarettes.

At less generous moments, GIs would flick burning cigarettes to the ground just to watch the Russians scramble to recover them for a few drags. Pike recalled later that their gear was of poor quality, their boots flimsy, their field jackets old; they looked to Pike like hand-me-downs from previous conscripts. He told friends that atheir body odor would chase a buzzard off a s.h.i.+t wagon.a Pike had little more regard for their tanks, which maneuvered badly. The drivers were often from Asian minorities, Pike had noticed, because he reckoned they were the only ones able to fit into compartments that had been built too small. He and his men chuckled when the first tanks had rolled up that day and officers standing on the road struggled to position them using exaggerated hand movements and semaph.o.r.es, apparently to overcome language and handling difficulties.

But nothing was very funny about Pikeas realization that the Soviet army could asimply swat us out of the way if they ever decided to take the Western half of the city.a Pike recalled his orientation briefing when he had reported for duty in West Berlin.

aYou are the first line of defense,a his commander had said. aThe best way to get out of here if the balloon goes up is to put on a Stra.s.senmeister [street cleaner] armband on your left arm, pick up a broom, and start sweeping down the Autobahn all the way to West Germany. Thatas the only way youare going to get out of Berlin alive.a Pike had laughed then, but not now. He calculated the possible outcomes as he stamped his feet to stay warm. Either U.S. or Soviet leaders would blink and withdraw from the battlefield, or someone would shoot and a war would begin. In any case, he couldnat imagine his wife, Renny, heavy with twins, grabbing for a broom and sweeping her way out of Berlin.

The scene before Pike varied between one of imminent threat and touching human drama.

At one point, an eighty-year-old East Berlin woman decided to take advantage of the confusion to simply walk across the border to escape as a refugee. From the West Berlin side and only thirty feet away from her, her son shouted repeatedly at her to keep walking though an East Berlin policeman blocked her path. The crowd watched in fear as her son shouted over and over again: aMutter, komm doch, bitte!a (aMother, come on, please!a).

The officer, whose standing orders were to shoot to kill those trying to flee, stood to the side and called off his dog in a random act of mercy. The old woman took ten more faltering steps before falling into her sonas arms as she crossed the line to freedom amid onlookersa cheers.

Down the street from the unmarked Soviet tanks in the capitalist West, bathed in light from six high-powered searchlights mounted by the East Germans on wooden towers just the day before, four U.S. M48 Patton tanks rested, the first pair on the white painted line on Friedrichstra.s.se separating East and West. Two more tanks were in a lot just off Friedrichstra.s.se, and four more were poised for action a quarter mile away. Near them were five personnel carriers and five jeeps loaded with MPs wearing bulletproof vests and with bayonets fixed to rifles.

U.S. commanders had placed their entire 6,500-man garrison in Berlin on alert. The French command had ordered its 3,000 men held in barracks. The British had brought out two ant.i.tank guns near the Brandenburg Gate, about 600 yards away, and had sent armed patrols right up to the barbed-wire barricade at the gate. A New York Times reporter chronicled the scene for his readers: aIt was like two chess players trying to come to grips in the middle of a disorganized board, with General Clay moving the American pieces and, presumably, Marshal Ivan S. Konev, the recently appointed Soviet Commander in East Germany moving the Soviet mena. As personal representative of President Kennedy, General Clay does not have a place in the regular chain of command. Butait is clear that his special position has given him the decisive voice in local decisions.a Pike and his MPs were eager to stand up to the communists, having been frustrated that their commanders had kept them in barracks on August 13. It was three weeks after the border had been closed, and Pike and his men had been reduced to watching helplessly across the border as East German Young Pioneer construction brigades replaced the flimsy barbed-wire barrier with cinder blocks.

Pike had sought guidance from his superiors over whether he should do something to disrupt their handiwork, but he got what became a consistent message: U.S. soldiers should sit on their hands and watch the Wall rise.

On the evening of September 1, Pike would recall that one of the East Germans building the wall had glanced left and right to make sure no one was watching, and then said to him over the barbed wire, aLieutenant, look how slowly Iam working. What are you waiting for?a He wanted the Americans to intervene.

Later, a police officer standing behind the worker said much the same: aLook, Lieutenant, my machine gun isnat loaded. What are you waiting for?a In order to avoid an unwanted firefight, East German officers had not put bullets in the chambers of such border troops, and he was sharing that information with Pike so the U.S. would know it could strike.

Pike pa.s.sed all that information to his superiors but was again told to show restraint.

The orders to begin the military escorts the previous Sunday were the biggest morale-booster of the year. Pikeas men were to hold the line, be vigilant, and fire upon communist border police should they engage. With rifles loaded and tanks protecting their rear, they had repeatedly guided Allied civilian cars and tourist buses through the borderas zigzag barriers.