Forty Autumns

by Nina Willner

  In Karlshorst, everything was at a standstill. There was only silence, jarring and intense, like the stun lock moment before your parachute deploys. With a gun pointed at my head through the car window, I was alone with my thoughts, flicking through my mental files and relying on my instincts to try to gauge the soldier’s state of mind and his maturity as a leader. During and in the aftermath of the Nicholson incident, the Soviets had reacted with blatant disregard for the loss of life, so it was hard to predict what he might do, but I kept trying to sense whether he was likely to pull the trigger. Did he have any respect for me as an adversary, as an American, as an officer, as a woman, as another human being?

  I held the mike, trying to bide my time, pretending to talk and listen for instructions from home base. I knew I needed to somehow get control of the situation, to get the lieutenant to calm down before he or his men did something reckless. I sensed that he was waiting me out. As I “consulted with base,” I slowly turned to look up at him and into his face.

  The gun, still pointed at my head, now began to shake, and rattled against the glass as if he had become nervous or confused. I seized the moment, turned back slowly to my fake radio transmission, talked and nodded, then gently but decisively set the mike back into its clip holder. Acknowledging with a slight nod that the lieutenant had the upper hand, I then made a slow but firm motion, as deliberate a hand gesture as I have ever made, pointing to show him my intention to move the car forward.

  “Inch the car forward,” I told my driver.

  “Ma’am, there’s a Russian with an AK standing in front of us.”

  “Inch the car forward,” I repeated. “He’ll move.”

  My driver carefully pressed the gas pedal and the car gently pushed up against the soldier with the rifle who was blocking our escape. His eyes grew wide. He reacted by tightening his grip on his weapon and thrusting forward, butting up resolutely against the front of the car. He looked over at the lieutenant for guidance.

  “Keep moving,” I ordered, “very slowly.” As we continued moving forward, there was a nervous exchange of words between the soldier in front, now being forced by our car to walk backward, and the lieutenant, who had started walking to keep pace with us, trying to keep his pistol aimed at my head. Suddenly he stopped walking and called out an order and the soldier in front stepped away from our path with a disappointed look on his face, as if a fox had slipped from the sights of his hunting rifle.

  22

  IMAGINE

  THE ROAD AHEAD

  (1986)

  History has proved that Lenin was correct.

  —East German tenth-grade civics book

  The gun fired and we were off, ten thousand runners starting the 13th Berlin Marathon. It was a festive scene, electrified with life energy, the course lined with spectators, music blaring, advertisements overhead, decorations adorning the streets—all right in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall.

  As the race began, just over the Wall, armed East German border guards, some with binoculars, others with leashed German shepherd dogs, perched on an embankment, peering in our direction. The gloomy, vacant stillness of the East lay in stark contrast to the lively, colorful party atmosphere that accompanied the start of the twenty-six-mile race. It looked, as it always did, as if two movies, one black-and-white and one color, had been spliced together, the strange contrast between a free, open society and a closed one always striking.

  As I ran, Cordula and the rest of the East German women’s Olympic cycling team remained secluded in Marzahn in East Berlin, a few miles from the Brandenburg Gate and the race starting point.

  Unlike a typical marathon course, which makes a graceful loop through a city, the 1986 Berlin Marathon route was laid out entirely in West Berlin, coiling like a snake, winding around and weaving back and forth within the confines of the Berlin Wall.

  Initially grouped in a dense pack, we began to spread out, making our way westward along Strasse des 17 Juni, 17th of June Street, named for the 1953 East German Workers’ Uprising. We passed the Siegessäule,Victory Column, adorned by a golden statue of Victoria who stood high above at the top of a stone pillar, facing westward, as if watching over the city. I savored each step, knowing my assignment in Berlin would soon come to an end. After passing through Tiergarten and Charlottenburg, the course turned east and we ran toward Checkpoint Charlie. How many missions had our teams begun and ended at that infamous location, which had played such an important role in my life over the last few years?

  As the course passed the Rathaus Schöneberg, West Berlin’s main city hall, one spirited spectator held up a sign: “Ich bin ein Berliner!” a reference to President Kennedy’s speech the day he stood at the courthouse in 1963 and said: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’”

  From there the route ran south through the American sector in Zehlendorf, past my apartment, and the lush green Grunewald Forest where I often jogged or splayed out a blanket, had a solitary picnic, and read a good book. The path turned again and bypassed my office at Clay Headquarters.

  As I approached the last long stretch of road before the finish line, amid all the noise of the race and the crowds, I heard, “Go lieutenant!” and looked up to see some of my Flag Tour team cheering me on, one of my soldiers perched high above the street, dangling precariously atop the outstretched arm of a towering light post, which both scared and delighted me no end.

  Not long thereafter, my parents came to visit me. I showed Eddie and Hanna my apartment and the compound where I worked. They knew that I worked in intelligence but nothing about what my work entailed or that I sometimes worked in the East, and they knew enough not to ask. I showed them my favorite places in downtown West Berlin.

  With no way of knowing that Cordula was training in the nearby Marzahn velodrome, I took my parents to East Berlin on an official Allied Forces bus tour, a carefully orchestrated, limited tour that took authorized visitors to a few landmarks in the center of East Berlin. Once we crossed through Checkpoint Charlie, my mother immediately began to perspire, becoming terrified that, nearly forty years after she had escaped, she could still be snatched up by the Stasi and dragged back into the East. Despite my reassurances that no harm could come to her while she was in the care of a U.S. Army officer in full dress uniform, once we disembarked from the bus on Unter den Linden she became very nervous, constantly looking around for anyone who might be approaching her. After snapping a quick picture at the Brandenburg Gate, she darted for cover in the bus and refused to get off again. My mother breathed a sigh of relief only once we were back on West Berlin soil.

  Hanna and Nina in East Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate

  Courtesy of the Willner family

  In the East there was good news for the family. Heidi was elated when she learned that Cordula was being considered for her first competition outside the Eastern Bloc, to Italy, a “capitalist country.” And there was more good news. Reinhard was overjoyed when, thirteen years after he had ordered it, he finally got his new car.

  On one of my last Flag Tour missions before being posted back to the United States, I had a most surreal experience.

  Under a pitch-black, moonless sky, in a rural part of the edge of East Berlin, our car moved through a forested area to reach a rail line. As we moved into position, hidden in the wood line but with a clear view of the tracks, I noticed a little wooden hut nearby with no lights on.

  We turned our engine off. Our goal that night, a request from USMLM, was to watch the tracks for rail movement of air defense artillery systems that might be passing through East Berlin. From the woods emerged a lone, armed East German soldier whose job it was to guard that section of the tracks from curious onlookers, including us. Especially us. My sergeant, who had “befriended” the soldier that afternoon when he had scouted out this particular location, had given the soldier gifts of a metal U.S. Army unit badge
insignia and his Bic cigarette lighter. Upon learning that the East German soldier would be there that same evening, my sergeant had promised him that he would bring more “presents.”

  There he stood, a young, doe-eyed East German soldier, not much older than twenty. His weapon was strapped across his chest and pointed safely downward.

  My sergeant and the East German soldier exchanged greetings, even shaking hands. Then the soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out a self-rolled cigarette. He smiled a sweet smile as he handed it to my sergeant, who handed it to me as he introduced me as his boss. Then my sergeant gave the soldier a pack of Marlboros and a Snickers bar. Upon seeing the gifts, the soldier’s eyes lit up and his face broke into a wide, innocent grin. He thanked my sergeant profusely, bowing up and down and patting him on the back. The young man disappeared back into the dark to his guard post and we returned to our car to wait for something to pass through on the rail line that night. We kept track of the East German soldier by the glowing tip of his cigarettes, which he smoked one after the other, no doubt imagining the repercussions of getting caught later with American cigarettes in his possession.

  Sometime around midnight, we heard faint noise. It was not the train we were waiting for. It was music, and it was coming from the darkened little wooden hut nearby. Someone was taking his chances and tuning in to music from the West. And the song he was listening to was John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

  Just before I departed Berlin for a new assignment in the U.S., the Flag Tour team invited me to a farewell dinner at a cozy, rustic German restaurant downtown.

  It had always been important to me that my team understand that gender played no part in my role as team chief. But this was the mid-1980s when women were not always perceived by their male colleagues to be up to the task. And here I was—a leader of not only intelligence professionals, but also of infantrymen, the U.S. Army’s tough combat troops, a male-oriented domain.

  At the restaurant, we ate dinner and bantered lightheartedly about life in the office, tours on the road, and the near misses we had experienced on missions in the East. Toward the end of the evening, just when I thought things were wrapping up, a flower seller came through with a basketful of roses. I was abhorred when the senior sergeant in charge, the epitome of an infantryman, called the flower seller over and paid for some fifteen beautiful pink and red roses, which were then handed out to each of my team members.

  He mumbled under his breath and I could see that they were up to something, no doubt organizing how to present the flowers to me, which would be a lovely gesture but frankly unnerved me because I did not want to finish my stint as their leader by being presented a bouquet of flowers, something they would not have done with a male boss. But I pulled myself together, preparing to be gracious about the whole thing.

  They each said a few words, made toasts, some serious, some humorous, dramatically raising their roses or waggling them in my direction as they spoke, knowing full well that they were making me uncomfortable with their tributes, and especially with their flower waving.

  After the last nice words were said, just when I expected them to pool their roses into a bouquet and present it to me, the sergeant in charge said, “Here’s to you, ma’am,” at which they all theatrically tipped their roses to me and then chomped off the heads of the flowers, exaggeratingly chewing them up and swallowing, then pooled the stems, which they presented to me.

  After three years in Berlin, I chose to leave by rail instead of by air because it would be my last chance to travel through the East. I reserved a seat on the slower, less popular alternative to traveling from Berlin, the U.S. Army overnight Duty Train.

  On the day of departure, a cold, wintry day, at sundown, I boarded the train at the station in the American Sector. As I settled into my compartment, the American MP crew locked and sealed the cars, a security measure required by the Soviets to prevent East Germans from trying to board so they could escape as the train made its way through the East. In Potsdam, the engine was switched out to an antiquated East German model, another requirement by the Soviets, a step which made the 115-mile trek to the West uncomfortable and painfully slow. With the crew’s all-clear thumbs-up, the train rolled out of the station and slipped into the rural landscape of East Germany.

  I stared out the window at the East German countryside, becoming mesmerized by the undulating movement of the train as we rolled through the barren expanse of fallow late-autumn fields, bypassing somber villages and hamlets and ashen fields of brown.

  As night fell, I reflected on my time in the East. It occurred to me that I had come to Berlin in search of something. And now, it seemed, as I was leaving, in my last hours on my last day in East Germany, I was still searching.

  With it pitch dark outside now, I peered out the window to see if there was anything I could discern from among the shadows. Through half-iced-over windows and the occasional assembly of leafless trees lining the tracks, I stared off into the night, seeing little more than an occasional solitary light from a house or the telltale glimmer of an outdoor bonfire.

  As the train rumbled on through the frigid countryside, I couldn’t help but wonder what was in store for the people of East Germany, especially as other Eastern Bloc countries were making changes. Honecker, that die-hard soldier of communism, had made it clear he would not waver in his decision to stay the course. It saddened me to think that my mother’s family was destined to endure isolation and repression for years to come while citizens of surrounding Eastern Bloc nations were on the brink of enjoying a reprieve from decades of hard-line communist rule.

  Somewhere around Magdeburg, I climbed into my sleeping berth and tried to make myself comfortable for the rest of the overnight ride. I read for a while, trying to clear my mind. Then I tucked in under the blanket and turned out the light, but sleep eluded me. Time passed, but the rocking of the train did not feel soothing to me and I had no desire to sleep.

  At some point, the train let out a long, shrill whistle, a haunting, hollow sound that echoed far and wide, reverberating through the countryside. Years later I would learn that East Germans who had heard that piercing whistle in the night longed to be passengers on the American train headed toward the West, and toward freedom.

  At around midnight, the train came to a slow, shuddering stop. We had reached the last stop in East Germany before crossing into the West, the Soviet East–West border checkpoint at Marienborn and Helmstedt.

  Under the glare of bright lights, the U.S. train commander and his interpreter disembarked and stood on the platform to await a response from the Soviets. After nearly thirty minutes, a Soviet guard finally emerged from a booth. Clearly relishing his authority, he sauntered ever so slowly to meet the American train crew, took the official paperwork and identification documents of all on board, then slowly disappeared back into the booth, where he and his crew took their time to painstakingly scrutinize each document to find any mistake they could. Any minute discrepancy, no matter how small, a one-letter misspelling, a date in error, a number out of place, could cause the train to be held up for hours. It was simply another form of harassment meant to make things difficult for the Americans one last time before they left the East.

  My attention could only be held by this scene for so long before my eyes were drawn to a flickering light coming from a cabin just beyond the station platform, near the forest. The window backlit, I could make out a curtain, and the silhouette of a figure, an old woman, I thought, seated, hunched over and still, like she was waiting for someone. Someone’s grandmother.

  Then a face peered out from behind the lace curtain that framed the window. Another figure in the background, perhaps her daughter. I could not make out the details of their faces, but my thoughts ran wild and I imagined them to look just like Oma and my aunt Heidi. I was captivated and could not look away. Though I knew it was impossible that this was Heidi and Oma, who had died nearly ten years earlier, a sense of longing rose within me and, for a brief, exulta
nt moment I allowed myself to consider the idea. I watched the old woman in the chair by the window and envisioned Oma’s face as I stared into the night, my own face reflected in the windowpane.

  Down below, the Soviet guard emerged from the shed and shot a slow, furtive glance at the passenger train cars above. He returned the documents, turned his back to the U.S. crew, and walked away. We had been dismissed by the Soviets and were free to pass into West Germany.

  The train began to move again. No, I felt like saying. Let me stay here a moment longer. But soon the train moved on, haltingly, achingly, on down the tracks toward the West.

  23

  “TEAR DOWN THIS WALL”

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  (1987–1988)

  Who wants to talk us into changing, and why?

  —Erich Honecker

  In the United States, President Reagan continued to rail against communism. In the Soviet Union, General Secretary Gorbachev worked to promote his ambitious transformation agenda. Other Eastern Bloc countries followed his lead. Honecker, however, remained unyielding, refusing to budge from the path he had set forth for his country. But with Gorbachev now gaining in global popularity, and more and more East Germans tuning in to Western newscasts, by now many had heard Gorbachev’s call for change.