The two men walked along the grassed area in between the signal fence to their right and the dog run on the left.
“Your dog really bad then, Gerhard?”
“Yes,” responded the thirty-one year-old border guard, part of the infamous Grenztruppen der DDR. “He’s being kept inside. The vet’s concerned about him. I am as well.”
“I can tell.” His comrade Burlin Holzmann, also a border guard, laughed. He was much younger than his companion, only twenty-three years of age, and had been in the job for less than a year. “We see you walking him up and down rather than leaving him chained up on the dog run.”
“It’s cruel, Burlin, leaving them tied up like that.” Gerhard’s voice rose passionately. “Tied to a chain for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in all weathers and only a box to sleep in.”
“You’ve always been soft towards them. Someone told me you took one home rather than let it be put down.”
Gerhard turned towards his companion and slapped him on the back. “He makes a great house dog, and God help anyone who tries to break in.” He chuckled. “They have a shit life though.” He patted the pockets of his splinter-pattern tunic top then rummaged through each one of the four pockets. He and his companion were dressed alike: splinter-pattern tunic top, with a black belt around the middle, over the top of matching combat trousers and black three-quarter-length boots. They also wore soft forage caps, some basic skeleton webbing, and a knife and scabbard. Their uniform was very similar to that of soldiers in the National Volksarmee. The only thing that differentiated them from the East German Army were the green tabs on their shoulders marking them out as Grenztruppen der DDR. Each had an MPiK Kalashnikov automatic rifle slung over their shoulder.
“Can’t you find your cigarettes, Gerhard? You know the leutnant doesn’t like you smoking when on patrol.”
“Bugger the leutnant, bugger them all. I need a smoke.”
“Twenty minutes and we’ll be at the bunker. You can sneak one there.”
“Good idea, young Burlin, you’re smarter than I thought. Anyway, they’re all occupied down by the border crossing point.”
“Probably. What’s going on down there?”
Gerhard patted his pockets again, eventually finding the packet in his trouser pockets. “Here they bloody are. I’m not sure. But the Pionier Kompanie seem to be loosening some of the roadblocks and then placing them back.”
“I saw that yesterday. They were digging up the Czech hedgehogs, freeing them from the concrete then putting them back.”
“Crazy, the bloody lot of them. No point in having bloody great pieces of angle iron to stop vehicles if you can just lift them out of the way.”
“Hmm, does seem a bit strange.” Burlin took off his assault rifle and slung it over his other shoulder, quickly scanning the ground around him. Looking left, he could see the dog run and, beyond that, the patrol road; then the control strip: a freshly raked piece of ground that would easily show up footprints of anyone who tried to cross, even if they managed to miss the trip wire. The other side of the strip, two parallel fences, constructed from several overlapping, horizontal tiers of expanded steel mesh over four meters high, ran along the border. The inner fence was lined with SM-70s Splitter Mines, directional anti-personnel mines. Beyond those fences was the Federal Republic of Germany.
Ahead, about two hundred metres away, stood the Beobachtungsturm 11 (BT-11), a twelve-metre high, spindly tower made up of interlocking circles of three-centimetre thick concrete laid on top of each other. On top, an octagonal observation building with glass windows giving a full 360-degree view of the surrounding area. Burlin shuddered at the thought of the times he had been up there on duty, knowing how unstable they were, a few having collapsed with border guards still up top. To his right was the signal fence, signalzaun, a continuous expanded metal fence some several hundred kilometres long and two-metres high, lined with low-voltage electrified strands of wire. If an escapee touched or attempted to cut the strands of wire, an alarm would be activated, warning the border guards of their escape attempt.
Burlin nudged his comrade and indicated the tower up ahead. “I think the Feldwebel is up there tonight.”
“He’s in a bad mood again. Surprise, surprise.”
They both unshouldered their weapons, put the slings around their necks, held their AKs in the ready position and pulled their uniforms into order. They became more alert the closer they got to the tower that dominated the immediate area and under the watchful eye of their senior NCO, who was no doubt watching them through his binoculars. Any minute now, they expected the one thousand-watt searchlight to bathe them in a flood of light. They continued towards the tower where they would turn back and head south, and continue to patrol their sector of the Schutzstreifen, the heavily guarded protective strip that ran along the Inner German Border.
The two East German civilians crouched down at the edge of the border road that ran east to west where, north-west of their current position, it crossed the Inner German Border into West Germany, hopefully their final destination. The crossing point was lit up like a football stadium. This disturbed Keifer as the previous times he had reconnoitred the area the lighting had been fairly low-key. The crossing point was normally closed at night. He scanned the border crossing point with the binoculars he had purchased from a flea market. They were OK, apart from one of the lenses being slightly cloudy. Beneath the lights, he could pick out a number of vehicles: small utility vehicles, three trucks and some form of digger. The guards seemed to be furiously working on dismantling the border defences, but then putting them back into position. For one moment, he thought they may be dismantling the entire border, opening it up for free passage. They could then all pass freely into the West. He smiled to himself, knowing that premise was extremely unlikely.
They needed to move. They were well inside the Sperrzone now. Even though civilians were allowed in the area with a special permit, particularly those that lived within its confines, the couple would have great difficulty in explaining away their garb and being this close to the border. He whispered to his fiancée, “I’ve got my bearings, Addi. We need to head south a bit before we turn west again.”
Adali shivered. Not from the cold. Although not warm, the cool air was not too harsh, but a thin layer of mist was forming around their feet. She shivered out of fear. They were in heavily guarded enemy territory now. That’s how they saw the Grenzer, Grenztruppen der DDR: as the enemy.
“I’m so scared, Keifer.” She gripped his arm tightly.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” he consoled her. “I know what I’m doing.”
She peered into his blackened face; like hers, plastered in mud to cover the whiteness of their skin. The strength and confidence in her fiancé’s features were obvious, the determination set. She relaxed slightly, intent on playing her part and not letting him down. Her Keifer would get them to the West and the freedom they sought. For the first time that night, she smiled. “I know. Let’s go.”
Keifer sprayed the area with his increasingly depleted bottle of ammonia spray and led them south. The area was quite damp, almost swamp-like in places, their footsteps sounding louder in their minds than they actually were in reality. There were numerous ditches, a metre deep in places, criss-crossing the area in lines east to west, a few running north to south. It was these that Keifer was using to aid their concealment as they moved closer and closer to the likely patrol areas. The ditches were too undulating and numerous to be patrolled easily, and probably too far away from the Schutzstreifen to receive constant attention.