The Berlin Duty Train

Was in the 287th and we had MP’s that would ride the duty train but I never had the duty. Worked patrol (line duty) my time there. Did take the duty train to Bremerhaven then onto Sweden to see some relative’s I had never met. Do remember some trading going on when we would take a convoy down to Helmstedt and stop at the checkpoint in the East. Beside’s playboy they also liked our cigarettes and cigarette lighters

During my time on the trains (69-71) there had been a crackdown on trinket trading.  Ditto on the British train.  On the French train, however, it was open season.  It was a different story on the Autobahn.  Unlike our army, the Soviet Army did not charge for replacement or supplementary ribbons, belt buckles, etc., so there were a lot of things available.

There was a Soviet lieutenant at the Marienborn rail checkpoint who was an officer because he was a sports star, rather than due to any signs of bright thinking.  (He used to sleep right up till the time our train came in, so did not come across as being very competent.)  On one of my OJT Interpreter trips he slyly told us that he’d heard that in West Berlin one could buy an item that interested him.  I thought, uh-o, he’s going to ask for some banned “anti-Soviet” literature.  Nope, he had heard about  a ball point pen that had an image of a girl in a bathing suit in a clear liquid.  When one tipped it to the other direction, the bathing suit slipped off.

It was hard to keep from laughing.  I told him that I was too new in Berlin to know where to buy such a thing.  (Actually, I figured that it would not be difficult to find, but I didn’t want to encourage him.)  Back in Service Company, my roommate was one of the heavy-haul truck drivers trained to drive the Autobahn.  I told him this story and he asked me for the lieutenant’s name, thought my description of him sounded familiar.  A week or two later he showed me the sparkling new Soviet Army belt buckle that he had traded the lieutenant for the sought-after sample of Western decadence.

— rwr

Coffee! Tea! Marblecake!

Tapping that coin against the glass of the compartment.

Who can forget that sound?

We in the 298th Army Band were told quite emphatically when we went out to the Zone on the duty train (usually the Frankfurt train, but on occasion the Bremerhaven train too) NOT to use the rest room when the train was stopped.

Somehow, I knew several bandsmen who would get a case of the turkey trots just as the train waltzed into the Soviet checkpoint at Dreilinden. And of course, the contents simply had to be excised down on the tracks just so the Soviets could get a waft of good ol’ American cooking after the fact.

In supporting the 11th ACR in the Fulda and Bad Hersfeld area (something we did quite a bit in the mid-80s), we would take the Frankfurt train but get off the train in Giessen at about 0400. Then we’d climb onto Army buses and head out to Bad Hersfeld or Fulda. The train did not halt very long, so we had to get off the train quickly, get our instruments out of the baggage car, and wrestle all that stuff down the track, into the tunnel, and up on the other side.

Sometimes, guys wouldn’t wake up when the train stopped and rather than simply hurry, they had to get frantic in getting off that train….

I learned that in 1974 British middle-school kids on spring break EGGED some of the GDR border guards while the guards were checking the undercarriage of their car.  Fortunately the guards didn’t retaliate.  You can imagine, though, what hell broke loose within the British school organization.