Critical Mass

Joe Murray, one of our readers, sent me the following story. It does a good job reminding us of the value of freedom:

Back in the ancient days of the early 1960s I was stationed with the Army in Germany during the dank depths of the cold war. The Soviets were just across the East German border and we were nose to nose every day. In September of 1961 a couple of buddies and I took leave to go to the October Fest in Munich. We didn’t have much cash but we did have sleeping bags and field gear so we camped by the Iser River and went to the fest during the day.

On the way back to Frankfurt, we were driving along a two-lane road and passed a sign, “US Army, Military Police, Dachau.” We turned around and visited the infamous death camp. It was a magnificent early October day; sunny, bright blue sky with puffy white clouds and emerald green grass all around. Bumblebees were busily finishing their nectar chores before cold weather set in. We were the only ones in the entire camp.

When we drove in we were merely curious about a place we’d read about. In short order, as we conducted our own tour of the place, we fell silent in an attempt to grasp what we were seeing. After going through the gas chamber and praying at the ovens, a couple of damn tough Cavalry soldiers were in tears. We couldn’t talk much on the way back to our base.

A month or so later I was pulled out of a Saturday morning classroom training session and told by my First Sergeant that I was assigned to a top-secret mission. It turned out that my group was being sent to Helmstedt where the autobahn crossed into East Germany on the way to Berlin. A Battle Group from the 24^th Infantry Division had been assigned by Jack Kennedy to make the land passage to Berlin to ensure that we still had land access. The Soviets and East Germans had begun building “some kind of wall across Berlin” the previous night. So I was there at about 06:00 on Sunday morning when the Battle Group crossed into East Germany with full combat load in the tanks.

A couple of months later, a friend and I were in Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. We watched as families took turns mounting a western subway structure and waving at their separated family members on the eastern subway structure across no-man’s land wearing the same color clothing or waving the same color flags so they could ID one another.

Earlier that morning my buddy and I had visited a street in the French sector of Berlin where a young fellow, exactly my age, named Rolf Urban had died the day before. Rolf had been trying to break through into West Berlin and the Vopos (East German Volks Polezei) saw him and chased him into a building where workmen were bricking up the windows as part of the initial Berlin Wall. Windows on the top two floors were still open.

According to folks we spoke with, Rolf got to a room on the fourth floor and managed to block the door. People on the western street could hear the Vopos battering the door with their rifle butts as Rolf stood in the window hoping that the fire department would get there with a net in time. As the door crashed open, Rolf looked back at them and stepped into West Berlin where he was free for a short time on the way down.

We went to a nearby flower shop and added our flowers to the pile that was growing on the spot where Rolf died. For 45 years I’ve wondered off and on if I could do what Rolf Urban did for freedom on that day in Berlin.

I’d majored in History and Political Science so I knew the political theories but on that day, remembering my experience at Dachau while standing at Checkpoint Charlie political theories were mere straw compared to their effect on people. My personal epiphany was that I’d seen the effects of the far right (Nazi Dachau) and the reality of the far left (Socialistic Communism) in front of my eyes – and their effect on ordinary people was exactly the same – loss of individual freedom and dignity with the unconscionable death of individuals as the end result.

Today, I believe that the America that you will inherit is in damn serious trouble… If our founders could come back today and see the federal government we have, I suspect they would nod wisely and repeat Franklin’s response to the woman who asked him at the end of the Constitutional Convention, “Dr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?” His response was, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Gentlemen, we are on the verge of losing it; not this year or next but in the foreseeable future, unless young people like you are successful in fixing the course of this shaky ship of state.