Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg
Hesse, Germany
0830 27 December 2005
The drapes over the plateglass windows had been opened, and everyone at the breakfast table could see what Castillo was describing in what he called Lesson Seven, Modern European History 202.
"You see that thing that looks sort of like a control tower? In the middle of the field?"
"There was an airstrip, Charley?" Jack Davidson asked.
"No. And don't interrupt teacher again unless you raise your hand and ask permission first."
Hermann and Willi, sitting on the floor playing with the puppies, giggled.
Castillo turned to them. "And laughing at your godfather also is verboten!"
They giggled again.
"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," Castillo went on, "was that that thing that looks sort of like a control tower was sort of the command post for half a dozen other, simpler control towers, three on each side. There were telephones in the smaller ones, and the larger one had telephones and radios connected to the next level of command--"
Davidson raised his hand.
"Yes, Jackie, you may go tend to your personal problem," Castillo said. "But don't forget--as you usually do--to wash your hands when you're finished."
Hermann and Willi giggled again.
"Why is it still there?" Davidson asked. "Too expensive to knock down?"
"Otto and I decided to leave it up, 'Lest we forget,' " Kocian said. "It did cost a small fortune to take down the other towers and, of course, the fence itself."
"Thank you, Professor Doktor Kocian," Castillo said. "Turning to the fence. You see, about three hundred meters this side of the tower, a road--or what's left of one?"
Everybody looked.
"The road is a few meters from what was the actual border. The fence was a hundred meters inside East Germany. They reserved the right--and used it--to shoot onto their land this side of the fence. They also tried to mine it, but were frustrated in that endeavor by good old American ingenuity."
"You want to--" Captain Sparkman began, then abruptly stopped, raised his hand, and said, "Sorry."
"You're going to have to learn like Jackie here to take care of that sort of thing before coming to class, Sparky."
That got the expected reaction from Hermann and Willi. Even Otto smiled.
"American ingenuity?" Sparkman pursued.
"As my heroes, the stalwart troops of the Fourteenth Armored Cavalry, made their rounds down the road, they could of course see their East German counterparts laying the mines. And they of course could not protest. But once the field was in, and grass sown over the mines so that those terrible West Germans fleeing the horrors of capitalism for the Communist heaven would not see the mines and blow themselves--"
"Onkel Karl is being sarcastic, boys," Otto said. "The fence was built to keep East Germans from escaping to the West."
"Onkel Karl, you said, 'my heroes'?" Willi asked, his right arm raised.
"When I was your age, Willi, what I wanted to be when I grew up was a member of the Black Horse regiment, riding up and down the border in a jeep or an armored car or even better"--he met Otto's eyes, then Billy Kocian's--"in a helicopter, protecting the West Germans from their evil cousins on the other side of the fence. I could not tell my grandfather or my mother or anybody this, however, because, for reasons I didn't understand, they didn't like Americans very much."
"Why?" Willi asked.
Otto and Kocian both shook their heads.
"Getting back to the minefields," Castillo said. "Once the minefields were in--Bouncing Betties; really nasty mines--"