Last Days in Old Europe

by Richard Bassett

  Next morning, we were treated to a chilling demonstration of East German military power in the parade along the boulevard Unter den Linden to mark the fortieth anniversary of the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Goose-stepping, grey-uniformed infantry, the unhappy heirs to the Prussian martial tradition, seemed keen to demonstrate their superiority over any other European infantry. I retreated to a café after half an hour to write in my diary: ‘When the Wall comes down, as it must, the thought of all this Prussian military tradition married to West German economic power is extremely disturbing’ (7 October 1989). Happily, I was wrong: after reunification the quietude of the West German military quickly infected the former East German military; I had witnessed the last parade in my lifetime in which German soldiers would goose-step.

  The speech given by the East German leader Erich Honecker was on every radio and television. He reminded me of the embattled Austrian leader Schuschnigg in 1938. There was the same high-pitched voice and sense of desperation in the face of larger forces. When Honecker shouted ‘Vorwärts immer! Rückwärts nimmer!’ (Forward always! Backwards never!), he sounded like an old goat. But this particular goat had yet to be slaughtered and his military parade was a reminder that the DDR was neither Hungary nor Poland.

  The following day I was back in West Berlin to have lunch with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, that ‘astonishing infantry’, as they had been dubbed by Wellington after their brave performance in the Peninsular War. They had subsequently fought gallantly in many of Britain’s modern wars. The rear ‘flash’ on their uniforms, a legacy of having been at sea in the late eighteenth century when the regulations concerning powdered queues were abolished, reminded one of unbroken tradition. Yet barely a mile away, the modern world was moving forward rather quickly. That afternoon, with a gloriously autumnal light infusing the woods, some Fusiliers took me on ‘wire patrol’ along the electrified fence which divided the Soviet from the Allied Sector before I was granted an interview with a senior staff officer. He was adamant that little would alter over the coming months. ‘For a start,’ he began ponderously, ‘the French wouldn’t wear any change. Imagine if they suddenly were not allowed to march up the main Berlin axis playing the Marseillaise.’ Who was I to break the news to these soldiers that the world was about to change? While the British army continued to discharge a major role in Germany, and while the only air corridor to West Berlin was controlled by the French, Americans and British, how could anyone suggest convincingly that the privileges enshrined in these ingrained protocols would soon vanish?

  The imposing Olympic Stadium was once the monument to the Third Reich’s sporting propaganda, but it had long since become the headquarters of the British military presence in Berlin. I was shown along a dark corridor to the office of the Chief of Staff who sat awkwardly alone, perhaps all too aware that someone not far away might be recording our conversation. The room was dimly lit. Outside, the sky was glowering in preparation for a full-blown Caspar David Friedrich thunderstorm. Just visible in the corner of the field beyond was a homely sign of British military occupation, a white cricket sightscreen.

  The black buttons on the officer’s tunic, indicating he belonged to a rifle regiment, made my host appear more saturnine than he probably merited. Our conversation was stilted, almost constipated. From the impassive expression on my face, he saw that the army Press Department’s carefully rehearsed lines were not very convincing. Finally, he exclaimed in exasperation and in a rare moment of candour, ‘Who in God’s name knows what is going to happen here?’ We parted with polite insincerities.

  Luckily, thanks to an old friend who was now Adjutant of the 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards (QDGs) I was able to see an altogether more relaxed side to the British army. The QDGs by happy coincidence were the only regiment left in the world to bear the Habsburg double-headed eagle, a link with the days when foreign monarchs were honorary colonels of British regiments and the old Emperor Franz Josef had accepted the colonelcy-in-chief of this distinguished cavalry unit. Captain Mark Ashley-Miller generously invited me for a few days R&R at the regiment’s headquarters in a former Luftwaffe barracks on the outskirts of Wolfenbüttel.

  It was one of the peculiarities of Berlin’s special status among the victorious powers that rail transport between Berlin and the nearest West German railhead, in this case Brunswick, was the prerogative of a special British military train. This train left Charlottenburg at the relatively early hour of 8.00 a.m. A ‘clean’ passport, devoid of any East German visa stamps, was a strict requirement for boarding the train. Military protocols dictated that the train was passing not through the DDR but through the Soviet Zone. Even a single smudged DDR entry stamp on a passport ran the risk of compromising these requirements and would therefore automatically exclude the bearer of the document from travel.

  Fortunately, a few weeks earlier, the obliging British Consul-General in Warsaw had provided a clean duplicate passport within minutes of my request and, thus equipped, I boarded the train. For the purposes of this daily British military train, Charlottenburg railway station, normally full of taciturn West Berliners pondering their commute, resounded for a few brief moments every morning to the accents and easy laughter normally associated with joining the London train somewhere in the Home Counties. Within seconds of departure, the British military police with their distinctive red caps vanished and the station became once again an insignificant point on the Berlin railway map. There was something faintly surreal about all this. The act of boarding a train gave the impression that West Berlin was a ‘normal’ German city, but the unquestioned nature of these exceptional if ephemeral procedures demonstrated that this was not the case.

  ‘You’ll find your seat in the third compartment of the second carriage,’ the redcap had briskly informed me with a slightly quizzical look as he quickly examined the beautifully clean pages of my passport. Half asleep – there had been a foreign correspondents’ dinner at the Paris Bar on the Kantstrasse the previous evening – I made my way to the dark, unlit and, as I thought, empty compartment.

  I had just sat down, relieved to see my seat was next to the window, when I became aware that I was not alone. Opposite me, in the gloom, I made out silver RAF buttons attached to a dark-blue blazer. The thin man who wore it was staring at me intently. If I had thought I might be able to snooze off the night’s excesses watching the East German countryside roll past my window, I was mistaken. I was a civilian guest on British military property. Long experience, no doubt at times bitter, had convinced my hosts that journalists on British military property, even someone as ‘harmless’ as a correspondent of The Times, were not to be left alone for a second. The Wing Commander introduced himself with a sardonic smile as ‘a member of the vetting department of the BAOR [British Army of the Rhine]’. He attempted to put me at my ease by saying he ‘just happened’ to be taking the train and that he ‘was delighted to have some company’, but his eyes were unsmiling and cold. The rest of the carriage was empty. I felt general doziness was the best weapon to deploy with this no doubt well-meaning minder. With the paranoia of the hung-over I looked at the briefcase next to him. A tape-recorder? That I was truly caged became quickly apparent when, after fifteen minutes of his not very subtle interrogation about bank balances, sexual orientation and education, I tried nonchalantly to find the restaurant carriage and some tea. ‘I’ll come with you and show you where it is. I feel like a cuppa myself,’ he said in tones of spurious chumminess.

  I was used to this sort of clumsy minding in Ceauşescu’s Romania, but it always came as a slight surprise to see such measures taken by my own side. A veteran correspondent of the Daily Telegraph with a sound grasp of le Carré had once assured me, ‘The ideology may be different but the methodology is identical.’ My minder’s questions were so crude it was not difficult to deflect them with those tried and tested tools in any experienced correspondent’s armoury: doziness and a façade of faint imbecility. By the time the train was safely on West German terri
tory, I sensed my companion was in little doubt that I was an amiable halfwit.

  After the train had pulled into the Soviet control point, there was some fine ceremonial with much stamping on gravel as the British commanding officer formally presented the train’s documentation to the Soviet military. The salutes completed, the British officer, a young captain of a line regiment, disappeared into the Soviet officer’s hut to exchange ‘gifts’ and drink vodka. These were obligatory parts of the ritual, off-limits to civilian passengers. ‘Shall we go back to our compartment? … It’s a bit boring waiting here,’ my minder suggested in a distracted sort of way.

  The train jolted back to life five minutes later and the rest of the journey passed relatively uneventfully. My interrogator’s mood darkened visibly when I said I was looking for a few days’ ‘R&R with the cavalry’, but no doubt he assumed one of his colleagues would be shadowing me all the time.

  We bade each other a formal farewell at Brunswick railway station. He did not linger. Watching his spare figure vanish into the crowds on the platform, I mused that such work probably took the same mental toll on its practitioners in the West as it so clearly did in the East. He was not to blame, I suppose. He had been polite and had done his duty. Yet, while East and West pursued different causes, it was always a little depressing to note the symmetry in methodology.

  As I came out of the station, a familiar Jack Russell poked its head out of a British military car, guiding me to my host. Immediately, in the exchange of greetings and friendship, the unpleasant interrogation of the previous hour was forgotten. I had first seen Bodger, a dutiful terrier, on the island of Colonsay, the previous Easter. He had since become a kind of unofficial regimental mascot of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and now rushed up to greet me.

  After the rather stiff encounters with the military in Berlin, the QDGs transported one into another world. At Wolfenbüttel, no effort had been spared to recreate in the unpromising buildings of a former Luftwaffe barracks all the comforts of an English country house. The mess was approached via a formal panelled hall at the centre of which stood the regimental guidon, stiffly saluted by every officer who passed it. In glass cabinets on each wall, between military portraits, were items of regimental regalia: silver caskets, mementoes of Waterloo and the Zulu wars and even a letter penned in 1914 by the regiment’s one-time Colonel-in-Chief, Emperor Franz Josef, in which he expressed regret that his regiment and his country were at war with each other, and added that in the event of any member of the regiment being captured, he would be treated as the Emperor’s personal guest for the duration of hostilities.

  Centuries of military history looked down upon me as I entered the mess where a wood fire was crackling and old copies of Country Life lay in neat piles on the table between chintz sofas. The mess waiter came up to me beaming a huge smile and the first words I heard – it was 12.15 p.m. – were ‘Whisky and soda, Sir?’ Everywhere exuded the spirit of St James’s clubland or a well-appointed manor house rather than the sandy heathland of the German plain. Large glass bottles of Trumper’s Eucris and Coronis adorned the marble basins in the lavatories. In my bedroom a tray with a decanter of whisky and a siphon of soda stood on the bedside table, flanked by two small anticipatory bottles of Underberg stomach bitters.

  The family atmosphere was contagious. Tremendous warmth and bonhomie pervaded the entire barracks, thanks in no small part to the fact that many of the other ranks were drawn from Wales, combining that gentleness, sense of humour and practicality for which Welsh soldiers are renowned.

  There was to be a formal dinner that evening but, before then, a party of thirty local CDU (Christian Democratic Union) politicians would be dropping in for drinks. The QDG commanding officer, Colonel Boissard, appeared and insisted that for the next few days I was to consider myself a member of the QDG officers’ mess and go wherever I pleased. (What would my travelling companion of a few hours earlier have said about that?) I would be welcomed as an interpreter, if required. ‘Hardly any of these Germans speak much proper English, you know, even though one of them is the colonel of the local Landwehr or something in the reserve,’ the Colonel remarked rather absent-mindedly. ‘We really ought to know what the German is for coup d’état,’ another officer cut in.

  After a highly entertaining lunch I retired for a siesta and emerged a few hours later suitably refreshed. Taking up a position behind the Adjutant and a few officers attired in their scarlet mess kit, we awaited the arrival of the CDU delegation. They noisily swarmed into the mess hall without pausing for a moment to greet the reception party. Like a school outing let loose in the Science Museum they busily examined every portrait and display case on the walls. Finally their ‘leader’ appeared and introduced himself as the local Colonel. Dressed in a purple sweater and running shoes, this high-ranking officer provided unmistakable evidence that (in the later words of one of the QDG officers) ‘all the aggression had long been bred out of the West German army.’ A less military demeanour would have been hard to imagine.

  His colleagues were largely retired older men. One, who confided to me in German that he had fought on the Eastern Front, openly lamented the absence of continuity in the West German army. Another, looking longingly at the guidon, could be heard saying to a colleague, ‘Perhaps in a bit of time we shall have the old black and white Prussian standards back in the German barracks.’ A third turned to his Colonel, unaware of a German-speaking Englishman near by, and said wistfully, ‘We could have had all this once … if only …’

  The mess waiters poured glasses of champagne for the guests. After some toasts and pleasantries, the party filed out, and I followed the Adjutant as he escorted them back to the main gate. The German Colonel looked at his watch and apologized for his staff car not being at the main entrance at seven sharp as ordered. While we waited, there was the usual chatter about what might or might not happen in Berlin over the coming days. These Germans clearly wanted change but were almost afraid of raising any hopes.

  After ten minutes, the German Colonel’s military car appeared, driven by a wimpish-looking young man in a rather untidy uniform who sported an earring and red spectacles. ‘You are late,’ the German officer said in an unconvincing display of authority. The driver was equally unimpressed. ‘You told me to wait at the other gate!’ he answered petulantly as he leant across to push the door of the passenger seat open towards the Colonel. Visibly exasperated, the German officer turned to us and said, ‘I suppose in your army he would have apologized, called me “Sir” and jumped out of the car to open the door for me.’ The Adjutant smiled, sharply brought his heels together and saluted. ‘Absolutely right, Colonel. Auf Wiedersehen.’

  Back in the mess, the regimental silver had all been carefully polished and laid out. The regiment was the result of a merger between the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards and the 2nd Dragoon Guards (The Queen’s Bays). This latter regiment had been exceptionally wealthy and its regimental silver was especially admired.

  While we were gathering for dinner, the Colonel of the regiment introduced me to a distinguished Parachute Regiment brigadier who had served in the Falklands War a few years earlier. Both men insisted I sit between them and proceeded to lament the fact that the army was ‘full of yes-men’ rather than individuals. ‘Why, only the other day some damn-fool officer from Staff Headquarters asked why I had not cleared the presence of a foreign correspondent in the barracks with the army Press Department. Is this my regiment or isn’t it?’ The Colonel threw me a knowing smile. My presence had clearly precipitated a blazing row with some military apparatchik in the Berlin headquarters, but the Queen’s Dragoon Guards had fought my corner and put their opponents to flight. ‘The thing about the cavalry, you have to realize, is that we have never had much appetite for red tape,’ the Adjutant confided to me. He too had had ‘some tiresome officer on the phone complaining’. The Colonel added, ‘You see, the trouble with the army these days is too little money. In the old days if something was done badly, the offic
er could say, “Stuff that. I’m going back to my farm.” These days, there are simply too many yes-men. As a result a lot of stupid things are done because no one bothers to question them.’ The pudding was brought in and the regimental band entered to play the Radetzky March. Iced Sauterne was served before the port decanters and cigars arrived.

  After the toasts we were just rising to withdraw to another part of the mess when an orderly quietly tapped the duty officer on the shoulder. The officer disappeared but shortly afterwards returned to whisper something in the Colonel’s ear. The Colonel leant over to inform me that the IRA had just taken a shot at an RAF corporal a few miles up the road. Without missing a beat, the barracks was now on maximum security alert. Nonetheless, festivities continued. As a small knot of us gathered around a billiard table, a young subaltern was sent off for champagne. He reappeared a few minutes later reassuringly carrying a bottle in each hand and two under his arms. With great solemnity he placed them on a table and removed the wire around the bottles’ necks. The junior subalterns then advanced with their unsheathed sabres and took it in turn to draw out the champagne corks with upward strokes of their blades. Each such sabering provoked wild cheers around the room. As the cigar smoke mixed with the sound of popping corks in the candle-lit interior, it was hard not to imagine oneself transported back generations. Indeed the soft light illuminating the silver and the scarlet mess uniforms invested the evening with a timeless quality. It could not have been much different the night before Omdurman or Balaclava. The British cavalry whose idiosyncrasy had so vexed Wellington was faithful to its traditions, and long years of peacetime soldiering had done nothing to cramp its style.