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May Days in Berlin
“It wouldn’t be bad to toast such an occasion, but we don’t have anything,” we
complained to each other.
But the ubiquitous soldiers!
“Comrade Majors, what do you mean you don’t have anything?! Hand me
a glass.”
Instantly they hauled out glasses and poured each of us 50 grams of pure alcohol.
In celebration we gulped it down— it almost took our breath away. It’s a good
thing that the soldiers immediately splashed water into our glasses. They had
thought of everything.
And that is how we celebrated the end of the war, even before the official end,
along with the entire Berlin garrison.
On 3 May, we received information to the effect that we must not postpone our
inspection of the western part of Berlin because this portion might be handed over
to the three Allies by the end of the month and then we would have no access or
restricted access there.At this point there was not a single allied soldier there.
In the morning, having again noted down the Spandau-Tremen route, we set
out in our Jeep through the center of Berlin, which we had already mastered.
Again the already familiar picture—up until the point where we entered the
city center there were lots of people with handcarts and all sorts of luggage.
There were tanks and shifting troop units. Once again we entered the ruins of
the city center. The Germans had set up chains of people to sort through the
rubble; they were passing stones from one person to another among the formless
shells of buildings. Clouds of dust were everywhere. This was the road to
Nauen. At one time a ham radio operator’s greatest dream had been to pick up
Nauen—one of the strongest long-wave radio broadcast stations in Europe—on
his homemade receiver.
Nauen is about twenty-five kilometers northwest of Berlin, but we did not get
there. On a country highway, almost at our destination, our military driver suddenly
slammed on his brakes, grabbed an automatic weapon, and shouted,“Germans!”
What Germans? It’s peacetime now—capitulation. But our Vasiliy was right.We
jumped into a ditch and watched as a gray-green column of Germans, armed and
in full gear, stretched along the road intersecting our autobahn.The soldiers moved
quickly. From time to time they raised their automatic weapons and fired a burst,
aiming who knows where—they seemed to be aiming at us.We didn’t understand
what was going on until tanks began to thunder along the highway behind us,
nearly crushing our Jeep. They were T-34s, so familiar to us. Belching fire, they
moved to cut across the path of the gray-green column.And behind them—standing
upright and firing on the march—came Red Army soldiers. A captain with a
pistol jumped down into the ditch with us. “Where are you from?” We tried to
explain, but he only threw up his hands,“Don’t you see? the Germans are fleeing
Berlin. They could finish you off just for the hell of it. Now, go to the colonel.
Over there on the highway, in the inn—that’s our headquarters.They’ll figure out
what to do with you there!”
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