Battlefields In and Around Berlin

Charley and I sat down Sunday morning to talk about doing the battlefield tour outside Berlin. Should we go?  Should we stay in Berlin?  Without any fear, Charley was ready to go.  Our friends, already there, had driven quite a way to meet us.  They encouraged us to come.  We thought about those soldiers, women, children and old people dead in the cemeteries, and those lying unburied in the forests and the fields.  The desire to honor them overcame us.

So we went.

It was amazing.

Our friends met us at 1 pm, and we drove to many of the pockets within the pocket that encompassed the encircled German 9th Army. We talked about one of the officers who had broken out, and returned to his men who couldn’t break out.  This man, this officer, chose to enter Russian captivity, a fate often leading to death, a fate often comparable to death, rather than live with the thought that he had abandoned his men in battle.  Who teaches their children that type of honor anymore? Who displays that type of honor anymore?

I know someone my age must have it, but where does he live?  As someone who travels up to three weeks out of the month, I often have difficulty remembering the last time most of my fellow passengers have acted with basic civility while deplaning.  I watch for it.  Yearn for it.  Mentally record it when it does happen.  Even from last year to this year I’ve seen a huge increase in the number of people who will mow down those in front of them in their haste to exit, even if they have no connecting flight.  Are we truly proud of what we’ve become? Or better said, what we’ve not become?

This German tank officer, after returning from captivity, worked with Charley in civilian life.  He never spoke a word about his battlefield experience or time in Russian hell.  Eventually, quietly and humbly, he wrote books about his experiences and this place.

The boys who met us in this hauntingly beautiful and sacred forest where so many were slaughtered were amazed to be with a WWII veteran who had known this awe-inspiring figure. They had studied all the literature about the battlefield that they could find, and this officer played a heavy role as an author of much what is known about this place.

As we drove, we stopped to see the holes the soldiers had dug to take cover from the constant artillery and rocket fire, and followed their trails as ever fewer survivors fought to break out. Charley and I felt keenly the importance of our visit as we drove with our friends until night fell.

As the sun breached the horizon we visited the immense cemetery where Charley paid his respects to the fallen comrades, and in the dark we visited a semi-hidden set of homemade wooden crosses dedicated to all those who experienced no mercy here, including some very young children buried without any identification or sign that someone was searching for them – their parents most likely dead before them.

We somberly returned to Berlin, deeply moved by the scale and scope of the tragedy that happened here.

On Monday we took a tour of Berlin, visiting the flak towers at Humbolthain and then driving down the famous Friedrichstrasse where we were completely stopped for three or four cycles at every light. We didn’t mind as we were singing songs, and Charley told stories about his leaves to Berlin when he was 19-years-old and in training during the war.  But his old Mercedes rebelled against this type of Berlin traffic.

Soon smoke was billowing from under the hood, radiator fluid gushed out, and unwilling to take the chance of a fire, we stopped dead in the right lane and turned our hazard lights on, blocking traffic and making ourselves very unpopular with Berlin drivers.

We called the local AAA (called ADAC here) and were informed of a 2-hour wait. Determined not to let it ruin our day, I left Charley in his stranded vehicle, walked the two blocks back to the Friedrichstrasse train station, and picked up life-saving food supplies – Berliner jelly donuts.

We sat in the car, eating, laughing, and getting our fingers sticky to a chorus of honking horns, hurled insults, and middle-finger salutes.

Finally our ‘yellow angel’ came and filled our radiator back up, shorting a connection to keep the fan permanently on, and advised us to be careful. We drove off around the Brandenburg Gate, through Potsdamer Platz, and down to the hotel where we parked the car.

Back on the street we jumped on the U-Bahn to get to my favorite military store OG107 while Sergey, the Russian proprietor, had it open. We missed a connection point and ended up seeing much more of the city than expected. For Charley, who had not seen the city in over 68 years, the time spent seeing Berlin from the elevated train as the sun went down over the Spree river was time very well-spent indeed.

Sergey welcomed us and relished speaking with Charley. He told us he would be closing the shop and warehousing his items to be used for films. Feeling very sad, we picked out an Afrika Korps rucksack and paid for it. An important piece of Berlin culture is finally dying out as the number of military supply stores have dwindled to near non-existence since the fall of the Wall, and the city’s character changes from that of gritty military outpost to sophisticated capital metropolis.

There’s much more to tell but  absolutely no time today to do it.  I’ll just have to explain more later.

With love from somewhere near Berlin.