I think everyone, sometime during his life, has an experience that is unique to no one else. This is a story that has encompassed a good portion of my life but the final chapter only played out very recently. And it certainly is unique.
In the early 1960's the Cold War was about as hot as it ever had been, before or since. I was assigned to a HAWK Guided Missile Battery that was deployed to Wurzburg, Bavaria, West Germany, arriving on June 16, 1961. Our missile battery required 29 acres on relatively high ground to be effective. The spot that had been selected for us was not ready to occupy because there were tons (literally) of unexploded ordnance from World War II scattered all over the place.
The Corps of Engineers was preparing the site as the Explosive Ordnance Disposal people declared each small area safe. This took a while, so our ground equipment stayed in our motor pool and required guards 24 hours a day. While we were waiting for the Engineers to declare the area ready, we really had a lot of time on our hands. One Sunday morning, August 13, 1961, while having breakfast in the small NCO Club, the Klein Keller at Emery Kaserne, we were surprised to see on TV (Eurovision) that the East Germans in Berlin were building a wall completely around the city.
Naturally, things were tense. And we were sitting with no place to put our equipment and no basic load of HAWK missiles on hand. What we had was individual small arms weapons for everybody in the unit and six .50 caliber machine guns for ground defense. We would not get our 36 missiles until September 2, 1961. Then it was nothing but a--holes and elbows as we prepared to enter the integrated air defense of West Germany. By September 6th we were fully operational and my family joined me on September 9th.
The reason that the government of East Germany decided to build a wall around West Berlin was not to keep the West Berliners from sneaking into East Germany. It was to prevent just the opposite. The city of Berlin was like an island, surrounded entirely by East Germany. Until the wall went up many East Berliners would go into West Berlin everyday, to attend the movies, or just shopping. Some East Berliners even held jobs in West Berlin. Many East Berliners never returned to their homes in East Berlin. From 1949 until the wall went up, East Germany had seen its population shrink by 2.6 million of its citizens. Many were skilled workers whom East Germany could ill afford to lose.
Even after the wall went up East Germans found many unusual ways to cross to the freedom of West Berlin. They swam the Spree River which runs right through the city. Several underground tunnels were constructed and large groups of refugees made their way to freedom that way. Even an armed East German soldier was photographed making his getaway. I remember telling my fellow soldiers, "If we are lucky, and live long enough, we will see that wall come down."
Our Battery's Primary Target Line (PTL) passed over Bamberg and Bayreuth and into Czechoslovakia for quite a few kilometers. It was facing east by north east. Our limits were established as a firing angle of 20º north and 45º to the south of the PTL, creating a firing cone of 65º. Our main detection equipment consisted of a Long Range Pulse Acquisition Radar equipped with IFF/SIF. This circuitry made sure we only fired at hostile aircraft. On the radarscope, in a van, we had marked the Check border with black grease pencil. If you have ever seen a radar "blip" on a radar screen you know that a radar return signal would show up on the radarscope as a small light green glow. Our operators trained on detecting and tracking aircraft that appeared on the scope well into Czechoslovakia.
In the winter of 1962/1963 Europe was hit with very low temperatures (-10º to -26º) and one day the radar operator reported a system failure because the Czech border which we had delineated on the scope was fully illuminated in light green along its entire length. But all other units with similar equipment in the defense were reporting the same thing. The US Forces sent reconnaissance aircraft to the border area and they reported back that they had observed literally hundreds of slow moving aircraft such as helicopters and dirigibles. It seems the minefields that existed all along the border had been rendered ineffective due to the frigid temperatures. The ground had frozen so deeply that refugees just walked out of Czechoslovakia to freedom. The picket line of slow moving aircraft provided aerial observation (and deterrence) of those who would come to the west. By now you must be wondering where I am going with this story.
In 2002 I became a computer user and learned to “surf the net”. One day I entered in the search box the designation of the unit I had been assigned to for four years - A/6/52. To my surprise (and delight) I found an excellent web site that was all about my former unit. I initiated contact with the Web Master, Karla Miles and learned that she had been a radar maintenance person on that very same HAWK site, only 24 years later. She very graciously welcomed input for “Early HAWK”. And I have contributed several articles about how things were when my generation of air defensemen was there. While exchanging emails with her I learned that she had been there when the Berlin Wall came down. I was so moved by the very coincidence of that fact that I became very interested in all that she and her fellow soldiers had to say.
Karla Miles met her husband Bruce while on duty at A/6/52. She arranged for a reunion of that unit and did quite well. The reunion was held in St. Louis, Missouri, right next to the famous arch. I drove for a day and a half to be there and meet this younger generation of missile men. My wife joined me and we had a marvelous time, even though I was a lot older than the average attendee. I am glad that I made the trip.
So you see, my prediction about the wall coming down in my lifetime turned out to be true. And I was only 57 years old when that happened. Anyone that wants to check out this website go to www.a652ada.com and see all that Karla has done. I might add that she and Bruce have three lovely children that are very active and are into swimming. Karla admits to being a “Swim Mom”.
