International Women's Day and "Women Making History" - A Berlin Story from Jennifer

(The VFW is observing "Women's History Month" - and one of my USAF Berliner friends penned an article that was published on their website.  It's a great story and exactly the kind of thing I love to hear and share when I encounter posts from friends like Jenny - people I am proud to have served with during Berlin's Cold War era.  Her article is cut-and-pasted in full below, but you can also click on the link in the title and head on over to the VFW page to see it in full.  - Jim)

A Stranger in the East

Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

I leaned against the window of our duty bus and glanced out. It was the spring of 1982 and we had just pulled up to a red light in East Berlin. There was a young couple in the car beside us. Cramped in the back was an old woman. I watched as she steadily tap-tapped her window.

I had arrived at my West Berlin duty station a few months earlier and, like most, was curious to see Communist East Germany. So when our flight chief announced a day trip to East Berlin I signed up. For security reasons we wore dress blues that day, no name tags, and were ordered to stay together in pairs. There was a preassigned itinerary including a list of places we could and could not visit. “Don’t wander off,” our leader had warned. “Don’t converse with the locals. Don’t give your name. Don’t ride the S-Bahn. Don’t drink the soda pop, there’s something funny in it. Laxative, I think. And for God’s sake, stay together.”

Our first group stop was the Soviet War museum where the Russian doyen proudly walked us through room after room explaining how the resilient Soviet Union single-handedly defeated fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War, or World War II. Next we were driven to the Karl Marx Plaza, the “showcase to the west,” with its dismal store displays and long queues of East Germans hoping for something – anything – to arrive in bulk. I bought a cheap notebook, its paper flecked with wood pulp. When the clerk handed me my change I thought the coins were fake, they were so lightweight and flimsy.

My friend Rex and I grabbed lunch at one of the few approved cafes, declining the soda. We poked around another shop or two, its wares just as depressing. I was taken aback by a small silver plated dustpan and brush for sale. It looked out of place next to the thick wool stockings and cheap alarm clocks. But for centuries the eastern part of Germany had been home to its aristocracy.

Now, the eastern part was Communist and there was no call for silver-plated anything. So someone’s family heirloom sat on the dusty shelves with scant chance of finding a new home.

After a short walk, Rex and I headed back to the duty bus. East Berlin, unfortunately, lived up to everything I had read.

At the end of World War II, Germany had been divided by the Allies. The western half worked to become a free democracy aided by Great Britain, France, and the United States. But the eastern half had fallen to Communism. The city of Berlin itself, although geographically located in East Germany, was also divided.

West Berlin, a little “island city” behind the Iron Curtain, was still part of West Germany and therefore free. But that had not been the Soviet Union’s intent. 

Immediately following the war the Soviets halted all western traffic into the city by road and rail. They tried to choke off supplies to the city’s western half in order to ensure its downfall. What they had not counted on was overhead airspace. Within weeks, planes from the US and UK began flying into West Berlin delivering cargo to keep the bedraggled city running. The year-long airlift brought everything from dry goods to canned goods, wheat, fat, fish, milk, coffee, coal and books. Aircraft came in so steadily that at the height of the airlift a plane landed once every minute. And there was the beloved Candy Bomber who had dropped chocolate bars from the sky, each equipped with a tiny parachute. All told, nearly 400,000 tons of supplies were delivered during the Berlin Blockade. Those who lived through it never forgot. 

Twelve years later, with the Allies still firmly entrenched, the Berlin Wall went up -- virtually overnight. East Germans were told it was to keep corrupt western capitalists out, but most understood it was to keep themselves in. Those who were able, quickly grabbed what they could and had fled to West Berlin, to loved ones, to freedom. Unfortunately, many older folks, perhaps like the woman tap-tapping her window, could not move that fast. Once the cement had dried on the wall, there was little to no chance of ever getting out. 

By 1982 West Berlin had risen from the rubble to become a thriving cosmopolitan city again. But East Berlin paled in comparison, like a malnourished cousin. Walking through its streets I noticed very few advertisements on its beige buildings. Clothing was outdated and ill-fitting. Music in shops was sparse, very little modern and nothing at all from the west. Propaganda signs, however, were prominent in the east, touting the virtues of soviet reform.

Our bus was headed back to West Berlin now, to our barracks, to a vibrant downtown, hopping bistros, and bulging department stores. I continued to watch the old woman as she tapped. I tapped my window and waved. She looked up and, smiling, waved back. Then she pointed to something just below my window and, to my surprise, began crying.

There was a small American flag painted on the side of our bus. She pointed again and saluted. Then I understood. 

She must have been a young woman when Allied forces marched in at war’s end. Perhaps she had watched as our planes brought life-saving supplies to Tempelhof Airfield. Maybe she stood in line waiting for her daily rations. And when the wall went up in 1961 maybe she had had small children and couldn’t get to West Berlin fast enough in a last-ditch effort. Maybe she tried but just couldn’t. So she had stayed in the east. Trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

I like to think when she saw our little painted flag she once again felt hope. I like to think she still felt kindness toward an ally who had nothing to gain but goodwill and gratitude. 

We could not have been at that red light for much more than a minute, yet I still sense the impact. I was proud to be a very small cog in our post-war mission in Europe. Proud to help stem the tide of Communism that had washed over Eastern Europe; to stand fast surrounded by opposition. But it pained me to see this frail woman saluting our bus, tears streaming down her face, knowing she had so little hope.  

It’s been almost 35 years since she and I waved, and I will never know if she lived long enough to see the wall come down in 1989. I’ll never know if she reconnected with family living in West Berlin. Or West Germany. I don’t know if she thought of escape or was ever able to leave the city. But I have never forgotten her tap-tap-tap. And I’ve never forgotten why I served our country.

A Cold War Berlin Story from @dailykos

Timelapse photo of the Berlin Wall in the 1980's - on the right, a photo I took in the Neukolln District in October 1984, and on the left from an unsourced link on Facebook.  I wrote about this in a blog post here.

Frequent readers may recall that I was stationed in Berlin with the USAF from 1981-1986.  Whenever I find a post on-line about the Cold War era, and in particular experiences in that city at that time, I love to read them and compare what the author has to say with my own experience.  Today I'm taking a look at a post by Mark E. Andersen from August 1 - you can find the link to his original post here.

The post is one of a series of five posts about Andersen's Cold War Army experiences in the Army, celebrating his memories while also enjoying a trip to those familiar places.  I enjoyed reading about how he came to terms with those things, my own denouement is derived from two return trips to Berlin since I left in April 1986 (on the heels of the LaBelle Discotheque bombing), and I have several friends who return on business annually, so I still have plenty of opportunity for introspection.

As I read Andersen's Daily Kos piece, three ideas came to mind:

• Andersen closes with his impression of Berlin as a "beautiful, vibrant city, at once old and new." Postwar Berlin is obsessed with the process of rebuilding and renewal, so it features many architectural projects showcasing design and technology trends for residential and office buildings.  Since 1989 and reunification shortly afterwards, the building process accelerated here and elsewhere, so that now the international style dominates every European skyline.  In Berlin, however, once you get to street level you see and experience that whisper of memory about the Cold War division, and if you look closely enough, you find the line of the Wall is left behind as a scar on the streets and pavements.  Even in this juxtaposition of old and new, I'm left with an optimism about where we'll go next as a society.  And I guess I'm overdue for another visit (my last was in May 2001).

Photos from an event we went to at Newseum in 2012 (post here).  Left to right:  Old East German guard tower, Mary and me near one of the old border signs, and a few segments of the Wall.

• Andersen describes the anxiety he feels while climbing one of the old guard towers (there's an excellent accompanying photo!) - I've shared that emotion.  I've had the chance to find the memorial to those who died trying to escape from the East, located along the Wall's old past at the Spree River near the Reichstag.  There are Wall sections and a reassembled tower at the Newseum in DC and the book Stasiland are both sure to provoke those feelings, and to remind us of why we're having them.
• Recounting trips to the East, Andersen mentions the bleak, black and white impression of his experience there.  I swear that one time I left the West, on a sunny spring morning, only to arrive in an overcast East, to find a brutal chill and snow flurries.  Our minds were shaped by the propaganda on our side, all those shiny new buildings and the sparkling western economic showpiece of the Ku'Damm.      

I look forward to finding articles on this topic, and I certainly enjoyed Mark E. Andersen's post.  As they always do, this article led me to a moment of introspection to see if I had learned anything since the last time I thought about the Cold War and my time in Berlin.  Certainly there must be conclusions that can inform how we respond to the events of today: an emerging Russia asserting a leadership role in the world; continued suffering under authoritarian regimes in North Korea and elsewhere; and the optimism of a warming relationship with Cuba.

I'm left with a memory of my own, from the last of four visits I made to East Berlin during my years there.  I went to a sporting goods store with the idea of buying some equipment and had settled on a funny dumb bell, shaped like a western hand grenade.  As a reminder, the regulations for travel required that we go in groups of six or more, in uniform - some of my colleagues were in the store elsewhere, spread throughout, looking for souvenirs.  

Soon I realized I was standing there next to a Soviet Army officer considering his own purchase.  He was buying one of those pocket fisherman, similar to this one by Ronco.  I considered the irony of the experience:  here we'd been trained to be adversaries, but just at this moment we were focused on the same thing, finding a source of recreation during our down time.  I put down my hand grenade and decided to look for an alternative memento.

Something changed for me at that moment.  At the end of the day everyone "over there" in the East, in the Warsaw Pact, were all still people, just as we were in the West.  The condition of their lives was different, sometimes vastly different, but we had a lot in common in the stories of our loved ones, our pastimes, and in the basic motivations that drive us as people.

While this awareness never compromised my work, it remained in the back of my mind all those years as I thought about those citizens as individuals, not as a force, and not as subjects of those adversarial regimes.  I guess it's a philosophy that remains with me to this day.

I am sorry that even in our modern era there is no alternative to war to solve some conflicts.  There is a huge price to pay for that, an impact to those who remain behind afterwards, both civilians and veterans.  This year, during the election, I am looking for opportunities to embrace and acknowledge this simple concept; I guess that if there is indeed any resolution from the experiences of my enlistment, this would be it, maybe an opportunity to contribute to some small change in the world.

Revisiting the La Belle Discotheque Bombing

April 5 is an important day in American history - mainly because it is the anniversary of MLK's assassination.  That happened when I was a youngster, and although I was too young to understand the man's significance when it happened, his impact was clear as I grew up.  After all, the neighborhood I moved to in Washington, DC in 1992 still bore the scars of the unrest that happened after his death 26 years earlier in 1968.

On a more personal note, April 5 is the day before the anniversary of my USAF enlistment in 1980, and my discharge six years later, in 1986.  On that Sunday morning in 1986, I boarded a flight from Berlin's Tegel airport and out-processed the next day, April 6, at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

In 2012, I wrote about the La Belle Discotheque bombing in a post linked here - the whole chronology of my evening on April 5 is there, along with a brief description of the events afterwards.

Going forward to 2016, I chanced to read a post about the bombing on Facebook (my 2012 post was also inspired by a friend's post on Facebook).  This time, I was amazed to see the author of the post - Abdul - who was one of the guys I encountered at the base NCO club that evening.  He and his friends had said they were on their way to La Belle and invited us along.

So here we are, 30 years later, and I was finally hearing the rest of his story - they were en route to the club when the blast happened, and arrived there shortly after.  I had heard over the years that he or some of the friends he went with were injured, but that wasn't true either. Abdul's post about the disco concludes with the following quote:

"Thanking God we didn't make it there during the explosion but we were enroute to this club the night they blew it up. Prayers and blessing to those who were in there especially the Army soldier whose life was tragically taken too soon. We had some great times inside Club LaBelle."

I'm so glad and relieved to hear this news all these years later.

(note:  After I posted this, I learned that there were a few USAF guys who were injured in the bombing - but none that I knew personally.  Several other friends were either there or on their way, so I guess the event could have had an even bigger impact on my circles.  Still, it's worthwhile to take a moment to think about those injured from this criminal act.  I hope they are having good lives despite the tragedy,)

Berlin Wall - "Time Lapse"

Sunday I was briefly surfing the internet when I came across a photo in one of the Berlin groups I follow on Facebook.  I've reprinted it above, along with a shot I had taken earlier - the location is an observation platform that was built in the Neukolln District of Berlin.

At first glance, I thought someone had taken an old photo of mine and made it into a black and white shot.  However, the person who posted this one (they did not know who the photographer was) mentioned the date as 1986. My photo was taken in 1984 during my "Bowie Quest" outing - I've posted on the events of that day a few times, including here and here, or you can click the label below for more info on the quest.

It is fascinating to compare the two photos and consider the changes that had taken place, visible on the East Berlin side, over those two years.  First, there is the guard tower that had been constructed, then the tank traps and barricades had been removed, and finally, the old advertisement on the side of the nearest building was painted over.  Even so, it looks like most of the graffiti was left unchanged!

I never made it back to that section of the Wall during my time remaining in Berlin - I left in April 1986 - so I didn't get to check out the changes personally.  However, this internet thing is catching on - who knows when something from your past is going to show up and enlighten you.

One for the Berliners - Brewing Memories

While I was busy brewing on Sunday, Mary took Tessie out for a walk.  As it happened, that was during the boil – when the wort begins to give off those wonderful smells mixed in with the steam evaporating from the kettle.  My brewing enterprise is still small scale enough that I can do it in the kitchen, and when I do, I turn on the vent fan over the stove.

Mary came back from the walk and told me that the neighborhood smelled like a brewery.  That was delightful to hear…and of course, it brought back a fond memory of my USAF time at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin – there had been a small Schultheiss brewery nearby, and in the morning we frequently would be greeted by the smell of boiling wort.

Google Earth map of Tempelhof Airport environs, in Berlin, Germany

After a little bit of sleuthing, I came up with additional information from the Google about the little brewery…I was surprised by this first link (note, it is a link to a preview page of the book “Last Flight from Tempelhof” – written by an Air Force friend), coming up as result number 3, which mentions the smell of the nearby brewery.

Here's a photo from Google Earth of the old brewery.

As I navigated the area on Google Earth, I found a few photos of the old brewery.  I remember when I first discovered it when I lived there – on spring mornings I would walk back to Tempelhof from the Mehringdam U-bahn station through the Kruezberg park, and I found the old brewery back there along the cobblestone sidewalk. 

Another Google Earth photo, showing the operations and
trades shops for the brewery.

According to this Wikipedia article, the brewery ceased operations in 1994.  Schultheiss now has a larger modern facility in what used to be East Berlin, actually to the northeast of the old site and Tempelhof field.     

From Google Earth "streetview," here is a photo
of the old Schultheiss malt factory.

Another link I found outlined a walking tour of the Tempelhof District.  That one mentions an old malting factory that was west of the airfield, and south of the brewery.  The presence of this facility was news to me, and I am glad that there was a street view photo of it!

Thus, another connection to brewing is discovered, I guess!

Nature Will Get Us All in the End

Over on "Abandoned Berlin" - one of the blogs I follow, which you can find in the right hand column - there's a post today about a villa that was destroyed in WW2. It's located in Steglitz, a district that was Southwest from where I lived in Tempelhof.  Fairly suburban, but the structure and decoration of the house looks beautiful.  

It was destroyed in allied bombing one night in 1944, and in the style of that blog, the writer was able to gather quite a bit of interesting information about why it is still a shell.  That reminds me of one of the houses on Vernon Street NW, where I lived in DC for a few years...in any case, a link to the post is at the end of this one.

Which brings me to the topic of today's post.  It's been quite a hard winter, and before the snow that started last night, we had some high winds out at Hawksbill Cabin.  It's taken its toll on the pool cabana, shown in the photo here.  

While it's not war damage, there are a few small projects we're going to need to get underway - and to me, that is a welcome sign of spring.   

Here's the link to that post about the villa in Berlin:  http://tinyurl.com/jwylemf

Berlin Reunion 2014: After Action

These friendships date back to 1982.

My friends and fellow veterans from Berlin, along with their families, held our annual reunion at Blob's Park in Jessup, Maryland this past weekend.  While there was plenty to celebrate with old friends, there was a sad note this year - Blob's has announced that it is closing after all these decades.  We'll have to find a new venue in order to continue our tradition in the future.

Along with all of us locals, who have been able to go to the reunion nearly every year, this year there were at least two out-of-towners - Eric M. was in from New Hampshire, and Tony O. came in from San Diego.  It was also good to see some of the old crowd who hadn't been able to make it to many of the past ones, especially since this was a kind of send off year.

Here's a photo of Eric at the Wall near
Checkpoint Charlie in 1985.

A couple of folks had photos with them to share this year (as in the past, I didn't take many because of the inconsistent quality for the iPhone in the light of Blob's).  I copied these two from Eric's Facebook posts, as a matter of fact - one he took at the event, and second one from Tony's collection that I found to be a poignant reminder of our Cold War experience in Berlin.

Here, Eric is taking a photo of the Wall near Checkpoint Charlie.  A group of guys were out for this walk, including Tony and others - there were a couple of other photos of them at other locations that day, including near the guard shack.  I understand there was an encounter with the border guards, and a close inspection of an AK-47 was provided at one point.

So, another great time, a chance to remember the good times of the past - and now to look forward to where our adventures will take us next year.  It was good to see everyone!

Danger to Personnel (A Mini-bobs Tale)

So, I've mentioned the mini-bobs earlier this week - I thought I might revisit them and tell a little tale of my first discovery of them.

During my time in Berlin, my Air Force friends and I would make an annual trip out to the Harz Mountains.  We'd either stay in the Torfhaus, a small alpine resort in the Harz, or in a town down below called Altenau.  There is a reference to the Torfhaus in a post here:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/09/brocken-stasi-site-in-harz.html

The first time I joined one of these trips, it was late in the season and the snow was melting off of the little ski slopes up there.  The resort operators turned to icy hill over to kids - and to the 40 or so of us - to sled on, using these rental mini-bobs (they cost about $1 for rental, and in later years, we'd keep them for three days so we could sled at will).

That's where the story begins, on a trip in 1984, when we first stayed down in Altenau.  Before I get to that, let me share the following instructional video about mini-bobs:



After a day of cross country skiing, and visiting the little pubs that dotted the slopes and the town of Altenau, we retired to our rooms at the little Gasthaus.  We'd ordered up a couple cases of the local Altenauer pils, and the proprieter's forethought was to put us in the basement rooms, so our parties would not wake other guests, who were on the top floor.  After a little while, someone had the great idea to break out the mini-bobs for a midnight run - I think it was Guey, Manky, and Gappy, whose actual nicknames are used in this story, since the statute of limitations has long expired.

Off they went, finding an acceptable launch point not too far away, as the story goes.  And the fact that there was a ledge down there, 20 feet or so downhill, which they'd seen in daylight, didn't trouble them at all.  Neither did the stonewalled creek at the foot of the little 60-foot hill - come to think of it, it was very similar to my front yard at Hawksbill Cabin.

So the story goes that Guey went first, yelping as he hit that ledged and launched.  He landed on down below, and they could hear him slide on down the hill out of sight.  Then the sound of another launch, some ice crunching, and silence - followed after a second or two by the plaintive cry of "help!"

This is why, at the end of many sled runs, I will also cry "help" at the finish, in honor of Guey's mishap.  He'd sledded off of the stone wall and down into the creek bed.  After slipping along the ice, at last he broke through, and was partially submerged in the shallow, but cold, creek at the bottom of the hill. This didn't stop hit partners in crime, as they all made a pass or two down the hill, before the Apfelkorn wore off.

Afterwards, they made their way back to the gasthaus, where the party had continued in my room.  When they arrived, they announced their accomplishment, followed by the exclamation "pig pile!" - whereupon they jumped on me, sitting on my little bunk there.  They were covered in snow, and of course, at least one of them was soaked with freezing cold water.

We had a good time, and I took the fun in stride.  However, the next morning after we checked out, we found that there was some damage to the little bed from having the four of us piled up on it.  I'd arranged this trip, and went to the innkeeper to let him know about the little problem - this wasn't the first time we'd had an accident there, and it wouldn't be the last.

I settled up with him for about 200 marks - less than $100, which he said would be the cost of the repair and replacement of the mattress.  We split that between the four of us, a small cost for a great memory.

And that's why, at the end of most mini-bob runs, I will yell "help" at the bottom of the hill.

That Lenin Statue in Kiev

Back in the early 1990's, I worked for a fast-growing company called Development Alternatives, Inc. as the director of federal contracts.  There were a lot of international development projects just getting underway in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and as we began to win those jobs I found that there were opportunities for me - as a former USAF Russian linguist - to travel to some of the capitals to negotiate the contracts.

My two big travel experiences were to Kiev and Almaty; during the next year or so I also made it to Moscow while I was at USC Marshall B-school.  Great trips, and I did find that the USAF training was solid - the language began coming back to me almost as soon as I found myself immersed in the environment, even in the Fairfax neighborhood in LA!

So the news this week about the protests in Kiev attracted my attention.  Certainly the geo-political aspects of the situation is complex and threaten to take us into some new and unfortunate Cold War era.  But one image hit home: the one where Kiev's old Lenin statue had been destroyed by rioting crowds.

On the one hand, that demolition was long overdue - many of the cities and capitals that were part of the Soviet Union had long ago removed their statues.  But the fact that the statue had stood for so long after the demise of the Union suggested it might last as a historical artifact for some time to come.

At one time, given my own Cold War history, I'd thought it might be cool to get a snap of myself with prominent Lenin statues in the former capitals.  That goal was short-lived - here's Almaty also - but we were so busy in Moscow (that was a marketing consult to 3Com) that I didn't even get a photo of the bust in the train station!

Comes to mind that I should get back down to the Newseum in DC to have a photo taken of me with the headless Lenin statue that is part of the Berlin Wall exhibit there...I'd at least have a triptych then.

Things change.  What would life be if they didn't?

Lou Reed (a tribute)

You can always play a Hank Williams song, you can always play a Beatles song, and you can always play a Lou Reed song. - Beck

It’s already been a full work week since we first had the news that Lou Reed had passed away of a liver ailment at 71.  Rock and Roll critics were the first to respond with obituaries – those began showing up on Monday morning and Tuesday, and I’ve paused to read them whenever I noticed them.  Then my friend Tom put up a Facebook status recounting the experience of meeting Reed in person twice at venues in New York city; by Thursday, personal tributes began to reach the media, including a post by Beck, and another – a letter to fans – by Laurie Anderson, Reed’s wife. 

My own first reaction was to think about when I first encountered Lou Reed as an artist.  That would have been when the song “Walk on the Wild Side” was a Top 40 hit – I wasn’t sure what the song was about, but we listened to that 45 over and over, singing along to “…and the colored girls sing ‘do-te-do, te-do, te-do, do-te-do…’” A few years later, when the meaning of life was all coming together for me, I would think about this song while walking to Faustos in Key West along Duval Street on the morning after Halloween, enjoying the stories about all the parades and parties that had taken place there.

The second thing I did after hearing the news was to head down to the basement for a look at my vinyl LP collection.  There I found seven Lou Reed records, some bought in Berlin, and some at a used record store in Tampa.  I figure I have a couple of CDs around, and I know that I made a cassette of VU that I used to play on the Walkman back in the day. 

Lou Reed was one of a group of artists who had a strong connection to Berlin while I was there in the 1980’s, which happened to be some formative years for my taste in music.  We looked for DavidBowie and Iggy Pop mementos (check out the label Bowie Quest at the end of this post as an example), and of course there was the Lou Reed album entitled “Berlin.” Among these thoughts was the trip into Kruezberg with Tony Orth to a record store I’d never found before so he could pick up a copy of the first Velvet Underground record – the one with Nico and the Warhol banana on the cover.

Since then I learned about all the artists who point to Lou Reed as an influence.  There was a quote by Brian Eno in the early obits about how the Velvets didn’t sell a lot of records in those first years, but everyone who bought the early pressings of the first record probably eventually bought a guitar and started a band.  Some artists that were listed in that Rolling Stone obit included David Bowie, Ric Ocasek, Chrissie Hynde, U2, Sonic Youth, and R.E.M. – I found that I have LPs or CDs by each one of these artists.

I listened to Lou Reed’s 1989 release “New York” over and over again – I kept the CD in the car and listened to it on my drive to work. When I made my first trek up to New York for a weekend, driving up the NJT with my friends Kelly and Mark, that was part of the soundtrack.  “Give me your tired, your poor – and I’ll piss on them!” we sang along.

It’s cliché to say it, but Lou Reed’s music is part of the pop culture fabric for someone my age.  He’d rank up there in the top 5 or so favorites if I was inclined to put together such a list.  I was sad to hear the news of his passing – but I have taken a few minutes here and there this week to find YouTube clips of his performances of favorite songs.  I found that clip of Perfect Day that I had never seen or heard before.  

So even though he's gone, I guess I still have a lot to discover about Lou Reed's influence.  

Post script.  After I wrote the original posts, I had a couple of other recollections I wanted to add.

Around the time of my trip to NYC, when we sang along with Dirty Boulevard, a few friends formed a band called the Despondent Astronauts and played local venues in Adams Morgan and the emerging U Street corridor.  They did a few VU covers, including Pale Blue Eyes and Femme Fatale as we followed them around back then.

During the U2 Zoo TV tour (in 1992, I think) - this is the stadium tour where they'd brought along all the East German Trabbie cars as part of the stage set - Bono sang a cover of Satellite of Love.  He was out on one of those islands they create to get the band closer to the crowd, and suspended above him was one of the trabbies.  He took a rope that was attached to it and gave it a spin - so the satellite above remained in orbit for the rest of the song.

Afghani Prayer Rug - part 2

I have acquired a 2013 edition Afghani prayer rug. Photo at left, it features a map and many of the weapons and vehicles you might encounter in-country.

Now, there is a nice symmetry to this rug - it makes a pair to the one I wrote about in 2008, and that already decorates Hawksbill Cabin.
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2008/06/afghani-prayer-rug.html

That one was made in 2002, the first year of our conflict there.  This one was made in 2013 - let's hope that this is the next-to-last, if not the final, year of our conflict.

There are other aspects of the symmetry, too, but I'll leave them for another post.  For now, I can't wait to see the two rugs together.

Part 6: Tempelhof's Growing Air Traffic during the Cold War

Here's an airborne view of Tempelhof Airport - I don't have source information on it.  Visible is the terminal building in
the foreground, the tarmac, the new radar tower, and the two runways in the airfield beyond.

It had been my intention to write this post on a combination of subjects – how Tempelhof Airport continued to function as a major transportation hub during the Cold War, and my fond recollections of my Cold War era time there during the 1980’s.  I’ve been relying on Christine Heeb’s thesis for some of the factual references during this series – you can find a link at the end of this post – and at this point in her document she separates the air transport elements of the airport’s history from the USAF operation.  I believe I’ll follow that model and split this bit into two posts as well.

Heeb writes that after the Berlin Airlift, Tempelhof benefited from two new concrete runways that replaced the old grass air strips.  Further, some passenger traffic had continued in and out of the airport during the Airlift, so that function never stopped – although it was likely very challenging.  Some of the outbound flights carried refugees from the city during the Airlift, in addition to more typical tourism and business travelers.

From one of my visits, a photo of the Platz der Luftbrucke and Tempelhofer
Damm street sign on the west side of the airport.

During my time at Tempelhof, one of the standing assumptions was that the west side of the airport was the civilian side, while we in the Air Force used the east side, practically dividing the place in half.  Early during the Cold War era, while the main terminal building was still damaged, passengers entered over on the civilian side from Tempelhofer Damm. 

Based on the governance of the city and occupied Germany, air traffic into Tempelhof was limited to flag carrying civilian airlines from France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  Typically these flights made a stop on their way into Berlin at a West German airport, and then they navigated via the corridors into Berlin.  Despite the extra time and cost of these stops, air traffic at Tempelhof continued to grow, reaching 6 million passengers by 1971, while the design capacity was only 4 million. 

Another limiting factor was the length of Tempelhof’s runways and the constraints on modernizing them for jet aircraft, so Tegel Airport, in the French sector north of Tempelhof, was the answer to the shortfall of air travel capacity in West Berlin.  Construction began in 1969 and the new airport was completed in 1975.  Finally, all civilian air traffic moved there, and civilian flights out of Tempelhof ceased for the time being, until 1981, when “air taxi” services began, typically operated as chartered air service and small regional airlines. 

As a point of interest, I remember the early days of these flights.  Some of my colleagues on the basis – not my fellow linguists and analysts, but the folks who worked in air traffic control – took part time jobs with the small airlines.  I remember being particularly impressed over beers at the NCO club talking with one of the guys who was getting flight hours in with weekly round trips to Hamburg – he planned to be an airline pilot once his enlistment was up, and here he was earning the experience he would need for that.

As the Cold War era began to close, first with reunification in 1990 and then with the handover of the airport back to the Germans in 1993, air traffic continued to grow at Tempelhof.  Heeb writes that it peaked in 1993 (not at the levels seen in the 1970's, however) and then proceeded to decrease on through 2006.  In fact, when Mary and I visited in 2001, we didn’t see any airplanes on the tarmac, although we did see and hear some airships out on the airfield. 

And so concludes a brief post on the air traffic side of things.  I’ll write a second post on the Cold War era that is focused on my experience at Tempelhof – again, I was stationed there from 1981-1986 – and put that up later this week.  In the meantime, here’s the link again to the Heeb thesis I’ve been using for background information on this series of posts:

http://www-docs.tu-cottbus.de/whs/public/alumniplus/master_theses/christine_heeb.pdf

Berlin's Tempelhof Airport - A Cultural History, Part 5

An iconic image of one of the "Candy Bombers" approaching Tempelhof
Airport during the Berlin Airlift.

In Europe, World War II came to an end with the capitulation of Germany in May 1945.  The city of Berlin was to be occupied by the allied forces of Great Britain, France, the USA, and the Soviet Union – my own service was part of this occupation, as a matter of fact.  Tempelhof Airport was located in the American sector of Berlin, so even though the Soviets had occupied it at first, by July 1945 it had been turned over to the American forces. 

Most of the new construction had survived the war; there is speculation that it might have been spared by some prospective plan to use it once the war was over. However, there was significant clean up that had to be done, and the runways, which were originally designed as grass, were no longer state of the art.  The American occupants worked with a German labor force to rebuild the airport, and there were special negotiations to provide air access to the city and to the rebuilt airport – these arrangements may be the subject of a future post, since they resulted in the air corridors and a special air traffic control committee.

The business of occupying the city and Germany as a whole was complex, and there were often conflicts between the national interests of the occupying forces.  As these escalated into the Cold War, eventually the Soviet Union made a show of power under the context of the implementation of a new unified German currency and established the blockade of Berlin in June 1948.  All land routes to the city from the west were shut down, and electricity shut off.

Aircraft on the tarmac at Tempelhof during the Airlift.

The blockade lasted until May 1949 – if the intention was to persuade the allies to leave Berlin to the Soviets, it was not successful, in large part because of the Berlin Airlift, the organized response to the blockade.  The airlift, coined “Operation Vittles” by the Americans and “Operation Plainfare” by the British, involved frequent flights to and from the city to provision the citizens and the occupying forces with all they needed to sustain themselves.  In all, there were nearly 280,000 flights to and from the city’s airports, as reported by Heeb in her document – and some of them actually transported “Made in Berlin” goods back for distribution to German and world markets.

Among the reasons for Tempelhof’s central role in the airlift, again referencing Heeb’s thesis, were the airport’s size and excellent connections to the city – both by highways and rail lines, as well as the large apron areas, which were partially covered.  Nevertheless, Tempelhof’s capacity was augmented by a newly built airport, Tegel, in the French occupied sector, and by seaplanes and additional transports in the British sector on the Wannsea and at Gatow airport.  During April 1949, the month before the blockade was lifted, air traffic at Templehof peaked with 1,000 daily takeoffs and landings. 

One of the "veteran aircraft" of the Berlin Airlift, at Tempelhof, 1995.

The logistics challenges of the airlift were a major victory for the Allies in Berlin.  It was certainly a cultural benchmark for me and my Air Force colleagues who lived at the airport – there was rarely a day during my nearly five years there that I wasn’t somehow reminded of this great feat, whether it was because I walked by the Platz der Luftbrucke memorial on my way to the U-bahn, or because I was out on a run near the C-54 Candy Bomber parked near the softball fields to the east of the main buildings. 

Platz der Luftbrucke, the Berlin Airlift memorial, in front of Tempelhof
Airport, approximately 1995.

Heeb closes out her discussion of the airlift with a note about how the event began to transform the German view of the Allied forces from occupiers to protectors, and not only that, but rebuilders.  My experience in Berlin reflected this goodwill, I was almost always treated with respect and friendliness everywhere I went – this may have been because I would typically begin interactions with a German greeting, quickly followed by a move to English as my ineptitude with the language soon became clear.

My next post will cover some of the major events of the ensuing days of the Cold War, including my time there in the 1980’s.  In the meantime, here’s a link again to the Heeb thesis I’ve been using for background information on this series of posts:

 http://www-docs.tu-cottbus.de/whs/public/alumniplus/master_theses/christine_heeb.pdf

Berlin Reunion - 2013 ed.

Last Saturday was our annual reunion of folks who were stationed with the Air Force in Berlin - I often post on the topic of my time in Germany under the label tagged below.  I'm always amazed at the crowd that shows up for these events, and I'm very happy when someone makes the effort to show up from afar.  This year, we had folks in from Oregon, Upstate NY, NC, Los Angeles, and downstate VA, and those were just the ones I heard about.

Now my group photo above (actually borrowed from Russ Janecka) was taken late in the evening...we always do that, and so we don't get everybody in! But you can see that everyone is having a great time.

This is a group of people that I'm proud to be part of, and I do look forward to seeing them all each year.  The surprise of who shows up randomly from year to year just makes it that much more interesting.  There's never enough time to catch up with everyone - that would be my only complaint!

It was great to catch up with Russ after all these years.  We overlapped for about 18 months in Berlin, and he trained me on some equipment - I ended up replacing him when his enlistment ended and he returned to the States.  He actually went back to Texas and has had a great life raising a family there.  He brought along some excellent photos from the day - I'd forgotten about the play "Norman, Is That You?" that he and others performed in, for example!  Being qualified on that particular system opened quite a few doors for me, in Berlin and after I left the service.

The event is held annually on the last Saturday in February at Blobs Park in Jessup, MD - right next to Fort Meade.  So if you haven't made it to one yet, consider joining us next year.

A last photo here of the seal of the "Electronic Security Command" - a legacy major command in the USAF.  It's called something else now, of course.  But the plaque that showed up at the reunion was a nice touch and made its way into a ton of photos.

Here's to you all.

Sitting in the Dschungel on Nurnberger Strasse

David Bowie has released a new single – apparently it’s his first commercially available music in ten years.  As I write this, I’ve embedded the video in the blog’s header, but a link is below if it’s not there anymore.

(Note: I was stationed in Berlin in the early '80's - during the time of David Bowie's emergence as a global pop star.  My friends and I were fans, especially liking Heroes, and we knew some of Bowie's history in Berlin.  So from time to time we might find something that combined something about Bowie and something about Berlin - the day we spent walking along the Wall in Neukolln, for example.  These posts are marked with the label "Bowie Quest" and you can find them by clicking on the label below.)

The song was released this month, January 2013, in celebration of Bowie’s 66^th birthday.  Much of it is reminiscing about Bowie’s time in Berlin, where he lived for a good portion of the 1970’s.  The title of this post is an early verse in the song.

Of course, I have a Berlin memory to share about this one.

There was a disco on Nurnberger Strasse that some friends and I used to go to from time to time, called The Sugar Shack (my Berlin years were 1981 to 1986).  In fact, that is the first place I ever heard Madonna’s “Holiday.” 

One time I was out with a friend on the way to The Sugar Shack.  Right around that time I had read something about Bono and the Edge hanging out in Berlin at "The Jungle," and then when we turned onto Nurnburger Strasse (about 2 blocks from KaDeWe).  We saw some very hip Berliners going into a building there, and we followed them in - we hung out for some drinks and then moved on to where we were headed.

It's a place I went back to a few times - there was a very good late night Trattoria across the street.  The video inspired a Wikipedia search, which says the Dschungel was at Nurnberger Strasse 53.  Clicking that address flies me to right where I remember the place.

From the looks of things, a lot of redevelopment has happened there on that street – the modern Ellington Hotel takes up a lot of the block. I suppose I’ll never know if I was really there at the Dschungel, that time and place, but I’ll go ahead and assume I was.

Here’s a link to the video:

http://youtu.be/QWtsV50_-p4

Sled Run

I’d heard about snow out in the valley last week, and sure enough, when I arrived at Hawksbill Cabin on Friday that’s what I found – a couple of inches of base with a crusty glaze from sleet and freezing rain over the top of it.  Add a little snow plow drift at the base of the driveway, and I couldn’t get up the hill in the dark.

In daylight the next day, Chris and I postponed our planned hike and decided to do some other adventures, starting with a sled run down the hill.  We used the minibogs, the little miniature toboggan sleds that I got at a store in Arlington a few years ago.  There’s a photo of them here, and an embedded video of me talking about how we used to sled on these in the Harz Mountains of Germany before taking a test run on one of them below.

Now, apparently, I have bored my readers with a similar video a couple of years back.  That doesn’t make our sled runs down the hill any less fun.  In fact, as a reward for reading through this post, here is a blur video that kind of celebrates the fun:

Whatever Happened to Flughafen Tempelhof? Part 4

Here's an image of the planned park at Tempelhof, from the Frietheit Tempelhof website (linked in post).

Since the publication of my friend’s book Last Flight from Tempelhof  (mentioned in the post yesterday with an accompanying link to Amazon), I have tried to keep an eye out for new press about the plans for redeveloping the old airport, and for what it might become.  Even though the airport was reopened as a park in 2010, the news had been pretty hard to come by – at least until I started searching for some information last month.

The first item I found was a small posting that summarized the award of a contract to two Scottish design firms for planning.  The text of that post and similar press releases outlined that the contract was valued at 60M Euros and due for completion in 2017.  The firms were identified as Gross Max and Sutherland Hussey.

 

Here's the proposed map of the park.  Honestly - it doesn't look much different than it did in my days there - 1981-1986.

All the posts highlighted a desire to keep the airfield as open space, with plenty of opportunities for recreation; even retaining the old runways.  It’s as if the architects recognize how unique and important their assignment is – after all, the airfield has a significant history.

I was fascinated to find that there was a group of people who were against any future use of the airfield in this way.  There is a link here, which claims that all veterans of the airlift were against it: 

http://airport-world.com/home/item/646-berlin-airlift-veterans-oppose-tempelhof-plans

Having been stationed there, as I mentioned, for five years, I find this position hard to believe.  The property is an incredible resource for the city of Berlin, and its reuse in this way will be very respectful of what went on there before.

Here's a reminder of the events that were held there in the old days.  I was part of the crowd in the center back of the apron here, where the cluster of little white rooftops show where we would sell snacks for fundraisers.

Possibly the best resource of all the links I found is the homepage of the new park – that is at:

http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/en/

Especially of interest there is the information offered about the plan for the new park:

The present form of the open space is a transitional stage and starting-point for what will be an ongoing development process. From this space, once used only for airport operations, publicly developed, multi-use, structured urban parkland will gradually arise.

The organization of the International Horticultural Exhibition Berlin 2017 will be a particular milestone on the way to creation of the new park landscape, and will be an important engine in the overall development of "Tempelhofer Freiheit".

There are a number of tabs on the page with information about the plan, and renderings of how the new park might look when it is complete.  I’ve pasted some images from there into this post, in fact.  It also list the six themes for the park's reuse,all of which honor the place's history - in my opinion, anyway:

• Stage for the new
• Clean future technologies
• Knowledge and learning
• Sports and health
• Dialog of religions
• Neighborhood integration

When I read about the plan for the Horticultural Exhibition – I told Mary about it.  As a result, I’ve started planning my next visit back for that event in 2017.  If we don’t go back sooner, that is!

I’ll close this series for now with a final link to a 2011 article that appeared in Der Spiegel magazine about the park.  There are also some images in a slideshow that accompanies this article: 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/scaling-tempelhof-berlin-to-get-mountain-but-no-matterhorn-a-758056.html

Whatever Happened to Flughafen Tempelhof? Part 3

Aerial of the airport in its heyday. If you know the origin
of this or any of the photos I've used, let me know,
I'd love to give the photographers due credit.

As I’ve been doing the research for this series of posts, I’ve come across quite a few links that outline the history of Tempelhof Airport – some of which I was familiar with, and some information that is new to me.  For example, I knew that the root of its name was a hint that the Templars had encamped here in the early part of the millennium, and I also knew that the Wright Brothers had barnstormed the place in the early 20^th Century, showing off their airplane.

Later, the National Socialists dreamed of Berlin as the capital of a unified Europe, where Tempelhof would become the modern central airport, designed on a grand scale.  That’s the legacy of the building that remains, although on an international scale these days we wouldn’t consider it so grand.  In the intervening years, post-War, it was first occupied by the Soviets, then we took it, and it has also been the location of German firms and municipal government functions – all in addition to being a working airport for much of its history.

One of the better links I found, focused on the technical analysis of the architecture of the place, is here:

http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/en/about-tempelhofer-freiheit/history/national-socialism/architecture/

Be sure and check out the slide show that accompanies that article.

Of course, the following search will take you to all of the posts I’ve put up here on the Hawksbill Cabin blog about Tempelhof:

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/search?q=tempelhof

Two of these are noteworthy to me today as I consider them:  the one that includes the YouTube video tour of the tunnels under the airport, and the one that makes note of my friend D. Mitchell Lindemann’s book Last Flight from Tempelhof.  In the book, the cemetery I pointed out in yesterday’s post takes a central dramatic role, as do the tunnels.

At the time that he was writing Last Flight from Tempelhof, the future of the airport was very much in play.  In fact, Lindemann talks about one of the plans to turn the place into an amusement park, and goes into some detail about what that might be like.  (I’m including an Amazon link to the Kindle version of the book here for reference:  Last Flight from Tempelhof)

So tomorrow’s post will finally turn to what’s to become of Tempelhof – thanks for hanging with me so far!