Walls

by L. M. Elliott

  “For right now.” The German bowed slightly. “That is to be renegotiated, I am told.”

  Sergeant McMahon remained silent.

  Pushing out his lower lip, the German considered Drew for a moment. “Sightseeing?” He sauntered, click-click-click, around the front of the jeep to face Drew. “Or a stowaway? Like a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, perhaps? One of my favorite authors when I was a boy. But do not tell our comrades that, eh?” He winked and leaned an arm on the windshield, all fake friendly, clearly suspicious that Drew was an East German teen on the run and hoping to trick him into exposing himself.

  Drew’s dad undid the safety button of his holster. “Get any closer to my kid, and you’re going to lose some teeth.”

  The German smirked. “A Wild Bill Hickok, eh?” He turned back to Drew, no longer friendly. “Kannst du sprechen?”

  “Yes, sir, I speak,” Drew answered quickly. “My father came to get me because I spent the night with my cousin, watching the fireworks from the Kinderfest.” He pulled his dog tags from his shirt. “Do you need to see my ID?”

  The German’s eyes traveled from Drew to the back of the Jeep. “A cousin?”

  “Yes, sir.” Drew felt a warning tremor of anxiety shoot through him. He shouldn’t have mentioned a cousin; it was easy to see what the German thought might be hidden in the back—a teenage runaway. Drew resisted the powerful temptation to catch his dad’s eye. He had to throw a strike—now.

  He started prattling. “My cousin . . . my cousin is . . .” Then Drew saw a way. Stick to the truth, just as his dad had said, but maybe make the pitch a bit of a curve ball to throw the German off. “My cousin is more like an aunt, really. She is a nurse at Charité Hospital. Very devoted. Very good. They’re training her to be a doctor . . .”

  Click-click-click. The German started toward the back of the jeep as Drew talked.

  Drew’s mind raced. Please, get away from the back of the jeep. He saw his dad wrap his fingers around his pistol. Drew glanced at the other motorcycle police, at attention, waiting to take aim themselves.

  Click-click-click.

  Drew rushed on. “I had a terrific time at the Kinderfest. That Mr. Punch puppet—very funny. And that chocolate people threw out their windows. That stuff was delicious . . .” What the heck else could he say? “I . . . I met Mayor Kressmann.”

  Click. The German stopped. “Texas Willy?”

  “Yes!” Drew faked a laugh. “He was really nice. He told me about starting the Kinderfest for East Berlin kids as well as West. I thought I might write an article about it for the school newspaper. It’s kinda . . . kinda like the UN, isn’t it? I mean, in terms of bringing all children together.”

  How much longer could he blabber? “I . . . I forgot what the mayor says about the festival. It has a swell slogan. What was it?”

  “Wir sind alle eins,” the German answered.

  “That’s it! We are all one.” Drew nodded vehemently, like one of those new World Series bobblehead toys. “German kids—all one. That’s beautiful.”

  Click-click-click. The German sauntered back to Drew, again leaning on the windshield, appraising him. “Kinder, die nach Kindern Ausschau halten. Eh?”

  Kids looking out for kids. Drew met the German’s eyes. Chilly gray, inscrutable. Was it a trap? A code? Had he spotted Matthias back there?

  A long beat passed. The German waited. An earnest bluff, Drew’s dad had said.

  Drew made himself keep his gaze steady. “Yes, sir,” Drew answered, “that’s a great theme for a festival. We are all one. Yessirree.”

  The German smiled, thoughtful.

  Drew held his breath.

  His dad eased his gun halfway out of its holster.

  Click-click-click. The German sauntered back to Drew’s dad.

  Another long, terrifying pause. Then, matter-of-factly, like a traffic cop, the German said, “There are two holes through your jeep’s back end. Some stones must have kicked up and nicked it at the speed you were going. The GDR regrets the damage. As you can see”—he gestured to the jackhammering troops—“we are working to improve our roads.”

  Drew’s father smiled. “Right. Stones. Happens all the time.”

  The German nodded. “Go to the alcove farthest to the right at the gate. We are letting Allied personnel through there.” He stepped back and waved them on. “Auf Wiedersehen.”

  They hurtled away.

  “Bullet holes? In the back—”

  “Hang on, son. We can’t look until we get into our sector.”

  “But—” Drew’s protest caught in his throat as their jeep reached a wall of East Germans blocking the Brandenburg Gate. Right behind them were tanks and armored trucks.

  “Get down on the floor out of sight, son. They should wave us through if they think it’s just an American officer. ”

  Drew slid down, now starting to tremble all over, a delayed reaction to his standoff with the motorcycle officer.

  “What do I always say about taking a wall?” Drew’s dad answered himself: “March straight and fast to it.”

  Drew started to complete his dad’s motto—“He who hesitates is lost”—but he stopped, hearing all around him grief-stricken pleas to be let through the closing border and shouts of refusal.

  “Here we go, son,” his dad muttered. Then, to someone Drew couldn’t see, Sergeant McMahon shouted a friendly, “Guten Tag!”

  The jeep kept its speed. Out the open door, Drew saw startled and frightened young Vopos start to raise their rifles, then lower them to nab two Berliners who had tried to dart past them, following the charge of the American jeep.

  “Almost there, son. There is an army of Allied MPs waiting for us with open arms.”

  They charged across the brief expanse of open pavement that served as a buffer between the sectors and screeched to a halt behind a protective phalanx of Allied vehicles and soldiers.

  Safe! But what about Matthias?

  Scrambling over the seat, Drew jerked away his backpack. There lay his cousin, balled up, face hidden. “Matthias! Are you okay?”

  Slowly, Matthias raised his head. “Yee-haw,” he murmured.

  Drew’s dad hauled him out and brushed him off, looking for injuries. “Praise God,” he breathed, putting his hand on Matthias’s shoulder. “Stay here with Drew for a minute. I need to report what we saw. Then we’ll take you home, Matthias. I should warn you that Mrs. McMahon is looking forward to fixing you a big pancake breakfast. So best be hungry, son.”

  Matthias nodded.

  As his dad walked toward other American officers, Drew felt a tsunami of relief. He punched Matthias in an exultant can-you-believe-we-got-through-that way. “Man, I was afraid I totally blew it when—” But he stopped short, seeing the tears flowing unchecked down Matthias’s face. His teal-colored eyes—the unique characteristic that echoed from Aunt Hilde to Cousin Marta to Drew’s own mom—were flooded with pain. Gently, Drew put his arm around his cousin’s shoulders.

  The two stood that way in silence, watching the chaos around them.

  A huge crowd of West Berliners bunched together, shouting damnations toward the east at the GDR soldiers who sat in water-cannon trucks, awaiting orders to flatten the protestors if the mob got too angry or came too close to the line. A fast-growing river of American and British soldiers and military vehicles rushed to create a dam against the enemy tanks visible through the Brandenburg Gate’s marble columns. Drew knew his dad’s unit had been drilled for a hundred different scenarios of Russian aggression. But standing by helplessly, outnumbered ten to one, as a million people were caged? Had anyone anticipated this?

  Drew kept his arm draped protectively over Matthias as his cousin wept, watching his people build a wall to divide themselves—a wall separating him from his mother and grandmother, perhaps forever.

  “I’m so sorry, man,
” Drew whispered. He could only imagine the hell going on in his cousin’s heart and mind. He’d had to say so many goodbyes as a military brat, but nothing like this.

  Matthias sighed, his exhale shaky, and murmured, more to himself than Drew, “Wie kann ich von meiner Familie getrennt leben?”

  How can I live cut off from my family?

  “For your mother,” Drew answered him. “And for your grandmother. Because they begged you to. That’s how.”

  After a minute, without taking his eyes off the East, Matthias asked Drew halfheartedly, “Pancakes. Was ist das?”

  “Oh, they’re great. Like crepes, sort of. I think you’ll like them.”

  Grieving, Matthias looked at him doubtfully.

  Drew shrugged in apology. “Mom means well. Trying to feed people is what she does when she knows they’re hurting.” He paused. “I know we’re lucky to have the option of a big breakfast.”

  Nodding, Matthias turned his gaze back to the growing crowd, the growing barrier.

  “You know,” Drew said slowly, “your mom said something else—that she wants you to not live in fear. To be where you can speak what you believe. Maybe . . .” He had no idea if saying this would be any help, but Drew tried it anyway. “Maybe you can take what you had hoped for in your new just society—before the Communist Party corrupted the hell out of it—and talk about it in the West. Maybe . . . And lord knows we can use the help with soccer.” He patted Matthias’s shoulder and said gently, “You can school us.”

  A small, bittersweet smile grew on Matthias’s tear-streaked face as he recognized his own joke.

  Drew smiled back. “Linda sure will be glad to see you, and . . . I . . . I know there is no way we can fill in for your mother, but maybe . . . for those brothers you never got to know . . . maybe—”

  “Cousins are almost as good,” Matthias whispered, repeating what he’d said during the fireworks. “Maybe?”

  Drew nodded. “C’mon.”

  Then, he turned them west, together.

  Author’s Note

  There are many people in the world who really don’t understand what is the great issue between the free world and the communist world. Let them come to Berlin . . . Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.

  —John F. Kennedy

  The Berlin Wall went up when I was a toddler. It came down one jubilant, hopeful November night in 1989 as I rocked my own baby daughter, watching the TV in awe as Germans—East and West—tore the cinder blocks apart with their bare hands, hammers, and crowbars.

  For twenty-eight years, that menacing concrete barrier, with its barbed wire, searing searchlights, and armed guards, loomed over the world stage—a chilling reminder of the Cold War standoff and a sickening symbol of the cruel walls people can build between themselves out of political zealotry. And yet, East Germans continued daring escapes to freedom in the West, using hot air balloons, zip lines, and tunnels. One hundred forty people are known to have died at the Wall, shot down during the attempt. Hundreds of unknown others were lost in collapsed tunnels, drowned while trying to swim canals, or caught beforehand, snared by the Stasi—perhaps reported to the GDR’s secret police by neighbors, friends, or even family—and thrown into prison for “reeducation.”

  Such a cautionary tale needs to be remembered for its human struggle, for its people yearning to be free, and for its lessons. And so this book.

  Walls is in a format I discovered worked well to distill complicated political eras when I wrote Suspect Red. That novel looks at McCarthyism, at what happened when political leaders’ rhetoric, innuendos, and hate labels pushed Americans to turn on one another. Spanning a momentous year, each chapter covers a month’s time, opening with news headlines, photos, and quotes from those four weeks, while the narrative focused on the trickle-down impact of polarized national dialogue on two teenagers—from opposite sides of the Red Scare debate—and their friendship.

  With Walls, the post–World War II division of Germany and the treacherous overnight raising of the Berlin Wall handed me another incredibly dramatic moment in history. The question of what it would take for an East Berlin youth—raised and inculcated in communist dogma, bombarded with anti-America propaganda—to trust a Westerner, and vice versa, felt like a meaningful and poignant question to explore. The topic also gave me the chance to show the life-or-death reasons for NATO’s formation, the harshness of daily life in a communist puppet state controlled by secret police, as well as to spotlight the courage of American military children—those “dependents” who follow their parents into dangerous postings and are uprooted constantly in service to our country.

  My boys, Drew and Matthias, are fictional, but they are inspired by memoirs and interviews. For instance, Matthias’s grilling in front of a FDJ youth tribunal and his agonized Selbstkritik (self-criticism); the coming-of-age Jugendweihe and its life-altering ramifications; the practice of shouting Freundschaft in greeting; and the pledge he signs to take up arms against NATO were all pulled from firsthand accounts and primary documents. The GDR did indeed reward fervent communist teens for spying on neighbors by giving them Olympic tracksuits, while severely punishing other East German teens for “lack of enthusiasm” at parades or lectures. (One teen was sent to a labor camp after goofing off during a classmate’s recitation of Stalin’s biography.) I often had to put my head down and shed a few tears when reading the heart-wrenching stories reported out of the Marienfelde refugee camp.

  “Texas Willy” Kressmann and his Kinderfest are fact. He was mayor of the Kreuzberg district for almost twelve years, known for thumbing his nose at East Berlin authorities while somehow charming them, for championing youth and reprimanding neglectful parents, and for grand gestures like taking all of his wedding flowers to a nearby hospital for its patients to enjoy.

  Drew’s experiences and outlook—the constant danger of KGB and Stasi overtures and harassment of Allied personnel and their families; the unnerving aura of being surrounded by espionage and four hundred thousand Russian troops; plus the Berlin post’s “little America” milieu and the eerie anxiety of traveling through the Russian zone on a duty train—are all drawn from army publications and accounts of “military brats” stationed in the divided city. The landscape they grew up in was rife with symbolism: a moonscape of rubble from World War II bombing was left in the Russia-controlled Eastern sector for decades, while West Berlin was quickly rebuilt. The Allies even created seven mini “mountains” by piling up debris. The highest, “the Hill” (which Drew mentions going to with other brats to watch for a glimpse of a new American satellite), is 260 feet tall and entombs a Nazi military college. When the building wouldn’t yield to dynamite, the American Occupying Forces decided to bury it with the wreckage Hitler had wrought as part of their post–World War II de-Nazification. But things like the statues at Hitler’s training pool remained, a haunting reminder of the Third Reich’s idealization of the “master race.”

  The only slight creative license I took had to do with the standoff between American MPs and Soviet troops over an East German who’d managed to stow away on a duty train. I moved it ahead in time a few months to allow Charlie to give context to the enormous courage of Bob’s actions in chapter ten. (If you’re interested in a film dramatization of that historic event, watch Stop Train 349.)

  The “Berlin Brats” who so graciously shared their experiences with me also talked of how well integrated military posts were in the early ’60s. But the sad fact was that back home, the United States roiled with racial violence, like what met the Freedom Riders in May 1961, or with pervasive systemic prejudice similar to what my fictitious American GI must confront in chapter four. The civil rights movement was gathering momentum under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and other nonviolent activists, following the success of the Montgomery bus b
oycott, which had pushed the Supreme Court to integrate public transportation. But still to come were the 1963 March on Washington and MLK’s stirring “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial; the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project to register Black voters, organized by CORE (of which Shirley’s nana was a member) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march. These peaceful protesters were met with brutal police arrests, attacks by the KKK, beatings from bystanders, and even murder.

  At first hesitant to send in federal forces to protect the nonviolent demonstrators, the Kennedy administration started listening to the demands of civil rights leaders. But it was LBJ who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court ruled, in Loving v. Virginia, that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional. In a terrible irony, Soviet Russia—which imprisoned and oppressed millions, invaded and annexed neighboring nations, denied its people basic human rights, and under Stalin, had engaged in ethnic genocide as far-reaching as Hitler’s—made ample use of America’s hypocritical racial inequalities in their campaign to stoke distrust and fear of Western democracies. A 1961 Herblock cartoon captured it this way: Russia and the United States are in a neck-and-neck race to win international respect and the Cold War, but Uncle Sam lags slightly behind, burdened by carrying a menacing demon on his back—racism.

  The bizarre juxtaposition of diametrically opposed banners and slogans along Berlin’s East-West border is fact. So, too, are the final chapter’s scenes depicting the calculated cruelty of August 13, 1961, when overnight the GDR unfurled 330 tons of barbed wire over 27 miles to cage in East Berliners. I found those details in eyewitness accounts and foreign correspondents’ reporting—potent reminders of the importance of journalists working in foreign lands, braving arrest and physical harm, to bear witness to events in repressive regimes.