The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2019 75 their homes. Suddenly an unusual number of old toilets lan- guished on our street for days. As we rode streetcars to and from work, another change we noted was the noise level among the passengers traveling along the route. Previously, the trip was virtually dead silent, with an unwritten code demanding privacy. Now talkative young West Berliners were boarding the streetcars, to the obvious chagrin of the older people, who had ridden street cars in silence for years. Occasionally an older woman would chastise a younger German into silence. Another notable change was at East German restaurants. Previously, wait staff would be required to wait on one table only, and when the patrons left, that was it for the evening for that waitress or waiter. When West Berliners started dining in East Berlin restaurants, there was seldom enough wait staff to handle walk-in patrons despite there being empty tables. This prompted some lively discussions, with the assertive West Berliners insisting on service. Hank Young was the management counselor at the U.S. embassy in East Germany in 1989. He served in management positions in 12 overseas posts between 1971 and 2004 and now resides in Asheville, North Carolina. In the Right Place at the Right Time Stephen Vogel Munich, Federal Republic of Germany I arrived in West Germany in September 1989 as a freelance reporter. I wish I could claim that I had some sense that the Berlin Wall would be coming down soon, but the truth is a friend had suggested I accompany him to Oktoberfest in Munich, and I decided to stick around for a few months to try my hand at stringing for The Washington Post , Army Times and other publications. On the night of Nov. 9, 1989, I sat in my tiny Munich apart- ment watching a dubbed version of “Mr. Ed” on television, something I regularly did to improve my high school German. Halfway through the show, as Mr. Ed spoke to Wilbur in German far better than mine, the network scrolled news script below the talking horse: Die Mauer ist gefallen (The wall has fallen). My German was good enough to know what this meant. I booked the first flight to Berlin the following morning and made my way to Checkpoint Charlie. My focus was on the response of the U.S. military, specifically the U.S. Command Berlin and its 5,500 soldiers. Jubilant crowds were swarming around the command post, cheering as East Germans in Trabants and Wartburgs putter- ed their way through the checkpoint and into the West. West Berliners formed lines around the incoming traffic, cheering and thumping on car hoods and handing out flowers, chocolate and champagne to the arriving easterners. Many on both sides were in tears. It was emotional for me, as well. My father had been station- ed in West Berlin as a CIA case officer, and I was born in the U.S. Army Hospital there in 1960. A year later, the wall had been built across the city (not a coincidence, my father told me). I had visited Berlin and gone through Checkpoint Charlie on a high school bicycle trip through Europe with fellow German- language students. Now I was on hand to see the wall breached. The U.S. soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie were caught up in the joy. “It’s been like a big carnival,” Maj. Bernard Godek, access control officer for the U.S. Command, told me. “It’s difficult not to get wrapped up in the emotion of the moment.” Revelers spilled over the checkpoint’s traffic island, normally kept free of pedestrians. “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Why go out there as Americans and start bossing people around? Why ruin the moment?’” Godek said. “We bent the rules a little bit.”