In December, 1972, I was serving in the US Air Force in Berlin as part of the 6912th Security Squadron ("Freedom through Vigilance" was our unit motto) and my flight happened to pull the mid-shift, midnight to 8am, for the 25th of December. My buddies and I were drinking coffee, talking about God knows what, wondering about what the Soviets were doing, and waiting for relief in the morning. It sucked to be working on Christmas, but it was duty. It was a pretty quiet night, all things considered, because sometimes Xmas could be a madhouse. I remember thinking, as I took my shift on the search position, "So this is Christmas in Berlin."
Then the site alarm went off. This meant a perimeter penetration. Over the PA system a call went out: "ERF team to guard desk." That was the unintentionally comic abbreviation for the Emergency Reaction Force, a group of us designated to supplement the Security Police in an emergency. We hustled to the guard station where we were issued helmets, parkas, and M16s.
"Clear your weapons!" the sergeant in charge said to us, indicating a sand-filled barrel adjacent to the weapons locker.
The four of us--the ERF team alternates--looked at one another. We hadn't handled an M16 since basic training.
"Don't give them any ammunition," the sergeant ordered the airman by the weapons locker. To us he said, "What the hell are you doing on the ERF team?"
He must have known that alternate members received no training for this sort of thing. The fact was, in any case, that we were strategically useless at best, being in Berlin and surrounded by the Warsaw Pact, and an intelligence liability at worst. The best thing our own side could do during a Soviet invasion would be to blow the site up with us in it.
"Well, shit," the sergeant said to himself. Then to us, "Look, you just follow my lead, do what I tell you and don't let anyone know you really aren't armed. Let's go."
We filed out the door in a crouch, staying tight against the wall of the building. I was the third man in the line behind the sergeant and another SP. Three other ERF members trailed me.
"Hold it! Freeze! We are armed!" the sergeant suddenly shouted.
There, standing rather wobbly as if inventing a new shimmy for a new dance step, was our flight officer. Let's call him Captain Towner. He was stinking drunk. Apparently he had slipped out into the secure perimeter area for reasons known only to him.
"Now Walt, don't make a big deal about this, man," the captain said. Walt was the sergeant's first name. Walt was black, a good career airman, and had come to us from two tours in Vietnam. He was a no-bullshit guy on duty, but a hell of a lot of fun at the NCO club afterwards.
"Against the wall," Walt said, and shoved Captain Towner toward the cinder block building we had come out of. Towner barely got his hands out in front of him and banged his head on the wall.
Walt looked over his shoulder at us, "Cover him! If he tries to escape, shoot him."
"Goddamn, motherfucker!" Towner said.
"Spread your arms and legs. Do it now!" And Walt kicked the captain's feet apart. Towner, severely impaired and with his feet on ice, slid down the wall, his hands clawing for a grip. He lay on the cold ground reaching for the wall for a moment before realizing he was down.
Walt grinned at us. To Towner he said, "I told you to spread 'em against the wall! Do it!"
He reached down and grabbed Towner's collar, jerking his upper body. "Get up!"
"You fuckin' nigger," Towner said. "You goddamn spook."
"I've heard it all before, Captain," Walt said. "Now get up!"
Again Walt grinned at us. He kicked the captain in the ass. Towner tried to get up, but his feet couldn't get purchase on the ice and he flopped face down into the snow and mud again. Walt pulled out a pair of handcuffs and clapped one bracelet over Towner's wrist.
"You fuckin' jigaboo, I'll have your stripes," Towner screamed.
Walt pushed his head into the snow and cuffed his other wrist. "Heard it all before, Captain."
He jerked the captain to his feet, turned him around, and told him to squat against the wall. Surrounding him were the four of us plus an SP pointing rifles at him. Towner's eyes went wide. Towner fell over in the snow. By now we couldn't help it. I started laughing, and so did everyone else, Walt included. Towner, a good officer, a pretty good guy, and a Russian scholar, had just done something that could destroy his career, but good. But this was damned funny. It was freezing cold, three in the morning, it was Christmas day, Santa was somewhere over Central Europe, and I was holding an unloaded M16 on my flight commander with the order "shoot to kill" from one cool Security Policeman who was going to teach Towner a good lesson. Walt earned the respect of the rest of us who never really gave the SPs the respect they deserved. We'd just taken them for granted, the guys with the guns. So this was Christmas in Berlin.
Finally, the six of us gathered Towner by his limbs and trucked him back into the building. Walt had us put him in one of the day-weenie's offices and gave him a wool blanket.
"Sleep it off, Captain."
"You're a good man, Walt," the captain said, curling on the floor and pulling the blanket over himself. He was asleep in ten seconds.
We went back to the guard area, cleared our (unloaded) weapons--Walt showed us how this time--and turned our rifles, parkas, and helmets back in.
"None of this happened, right?" Walt told us, "I'll report the alarm as a system anomaly."
Now the reason I tell this story is because it pretty much covers the total drama of my battle experience during the Cold War, and, of course, at no time was I at risk of anything. It was a comic moment that made a particular Christmas as memorable as any I've ever had. But as I write this, we have some 140,000 of our young men and women at very great risk far, far away, for reasons that have turned out to be lies. They are being targeted by all sides of a splintering civil war, brought about by smashing the one power that held them all neutral and failing to fill the vacuum that resulted by responsible planning and support per the rules of war.
I could argue that my presence in Berlin in 1972 was legititimized by the very real belligerance that existed between the world's two superpowers at that time, and that a commitment had been made to keep West Berlin free way back in 1945. And, of course, Berlin was an absolutely vital intelligence asset for us in Central Europe back before modern surveillance satellite technology and things I can't even imagine have been developed since then.
But what I'm getting at are those guys, like Walt, who really did and do put it on the line in a way that few of us every truly appreciate. Every Christmas I think of Walt and the two tours he pulled at Ton Son Nhut and then all the other guys I knew who faced real mortal danger--unlike me--and now all those who continue to face danger, and more for the vanity of a single man than the security of a nation. When it is for the true security of our nation and ourselves, it is the most generous sacrifice you can imagine, given the terrible horror of warfare.
I hope that you will join me in raising a glass to all those soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guard members who spent their Christmas not only away from their loved ones in a foreign land, but in a foreign land in which the majority of the population thinks it acceptable to kill them, and which, were they permitted to vote on the issue, would wish them all back home, just as we do. Please remember that the military is but an instrument of policy, and never the maker of policy. Please send them a prayer, or a good wish, or a care package, or tell their families that you appreciate their sacrifice. Despite the pointless catastrophe that this fiasco in Iraq is, and the total criminality of the policymakers behind it, our military does have a mission and a duty to defend us, and even obey a corrupted leadership in the spirit of keeping the military under civilian control. It is our duty ensure that never again will they be sent by some criminal civilian cabal to avenge, exploit, or oppress, but only to defend us.
It's the job that deserves our attention and thanks. To all our brothers and sisters in arms.
