West Germany: NATO Infrastructure Committes Visit

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Our next NATO Infrastructure Committee visit was to West Germany. By now Linda was over her morning sickness, and at five months she was showing her pregnancy. This was a good thing for her as the German escort officers were very considerate of her condition. Everywhere we went they found her a seat, and brought whatever she needed to her.

15 September 1985 Sunday. We all met at the Melsbroek Belgian military airbase at 9 am where we then boarded a German military transport aircraft for the short flight to the military side of the Koln-Wahn airfield. We were greeted by our German hosts from the Ministry of Defense.

We then boarded buses for a sightseeing tour of Bonn and the Rhine River towns in the immediate vicinity of Bonn. We were then taken to our hotel where we were left to do whatever we wanted for the evening.

While unpacking my suitcase and laying out my suit for the next day, I discovered that I had forgotten to pack a tie. So my top priority was to find a tie. Most German stores are cloased on Sunday, but I was able to find one at the train station...probablem solved. We had dinner with other couples at a nearby gasthaus.

16 September 1985 Monday. The committee members went directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a briefing by the Foreign Office.

Meanwhile the spouses had a tour of the Bundestag.

After the briefing we were taken to Koln-Wahn to board large 30 passenger helicopters for the short ride to Geilenkirchen Air Base which is where the NATO AWACS are based. NATO Infrastructure funds all NATO airbases so on our tour we saw many of the facilities we had funded.

The spouses had a tour of Bad Godesburg and saw Beethoven's birthplace and the Schwarzrheindorf double church.

That evening we reunited at a reception hosted by the State Secretary of the MOD.

17 September 1985 Tuesday. Right after breakfast we took buses to Koln-Wahn to board another German military transport aircraft. Our next destination: Schleswig-Jagel Air Base in Schleswig-Holstein, the northern-most state in West Germany. From there the committee members caught Huey helicopters to a research platform, which is just like an offshore oil platform without the oil weldrilling equipment, in the North Sea. It was kind of exciting landing on a small area in the wind. We had a tour of the platform and a description of the research they were conducting. This was followed by lunch.

Meanwhile, the spouses were touring the town of Schleswig.

The committee flew back to the air base and met up with the spouses for a bus ride to Keil. We checked into our hotel and relaxed a bit. That evening we attended a reception hosted by the Federal State government of Schleswig-Holstein. More speaches were given.

18 September 1985 Wednesday. The committee's first stop was the shipyard Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft in Kiel where they built diesel submarines. It was very interesting to follow the steps in the assembly process. We had lunch in the factory dinning room.

Meanwhile, the spouses took a tour of a farm outside of Kiel.

After lunch we proceeded by bus to the Submarine training school in Neustadt on the Baltic Sea. We saw a demonstration of an exergency exit from a submerged submarine where submariners must ascend over 100 feet in a column of water.

We then boarded a Federal Border Guard boat for the short trip from Neustadt to Travemunde. Upon arrival in Travemunde we took a bus across the river and along a spit to the inner German border as it ends with the Baltic Sea. We learned that the border with East Germany was actually 100 meters eastward from the east bank of the river according to the Treaty of Mecklenberg signed hundreds of year earlier. Why the Soviets respected this boundary rather than just going right to the rivers edge is puzzling, as it would have been easier to control their border. We also learned that this treaty allowed fishermen from a village which was now in West Germany to fish in waters that were in East Germany. Every morning the West German fishing boats would be met at the border out at sea and be escorted by East German Border Patrol boats to their fishing grounds through the minefields. Every evening they would cross through those minefields back to West Germany. The East German Border Guards had high powered telephoto lenses on the cameras they used to take pictures of us. Our escorts told us that our pictures would be on file in Berlin.

19 September 1985 Thursday. We departed Hohn Air Base on a military transport aircraft bound for Lechfeld Air Base in southern West Germany. I took the occasion to catch some shut eye while Linda read her magazines. AZt Lechfeld we were taken on a tour of some of the facilities we had funded, and then had a chance to get into the cockpits of the Tornado aircraft stationed at the base.

We had a light lunch hosted by the base, after which we boarded six Huey helicopters for the flight to the Krauss-Maffei factory near Munich. We toured the assembly line for the Leopard II tank, the German equivalent of the U.S. Army's M1 Abrams tank.

After that we went to the nearby Schloss Nymphenburg for a little culture and a surprise birthday party for the Danish representative, Arne. We then drove to a hill overlooking the 1972 Olympic Stadium and the city of Munich on the way to our hotel. We had the evening free to explore the neighborhood where the hotel was located.

20 September 1985 Friday. We boarded the helicopters again for a quick flight to Manching, where the Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm factory which assembles the Tornado fighter aircraft is located. We had another interesting tour of that assembly line, and then posed for a group picture in front of a new jet.

We boarded the helicopters again and flew south towards the Alps to the radio satellite earth station at Raisting. We flew low over the Bavarian countryside. On each of these flights, our baby would raise a rukus inside Linda as the vibrations from the rotors went through Linda's body.

We returned to Munich, and had a couple hours at the hotel to get ready for the evening reception at the Residenz; the Kings of Bavaria's palace in the center of Munich. Prior to the reception we had a tour of the Residenz. A young lieutenant who was escorting us noticed Linda's condition so in each room, he would remove the "Do not sit" sign from the antique chairs that had been used by the Kings and their courts, so that she could sit down. The reception was hosted by the Federal State Government of Bavaria and the Ministry of Defense. Our official program ended with dinner and speeches.

21 September 1985 Saturday. Our unofficial program was a day at Oktoberfest. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. The only amazing thing that I encountered was my Canadian colleague, Hank; he downed seven liters of beer! That has to be a record. I only had one liter, so could help him back to our hotel at the end of the evening.

22 September 1985 Sunday. We boarded the military transport aircraft for the final flight home to Brussels. Who knew that you could cram so much into one week! We couldn't have done it without the helicopters.

Note: the black and white pictures were taken by Committee members, including myself, and an official photographer, and assembled into a commemorative booklet which I scanned. This booklet also helped to jog my memory as I wrote this twenty six years to the day after we celebrated Oktoberfest.

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Photos

Bob at the inner German Border
if I go beyond that fence I get shot! Or step on a mine.

Comments

[Caroline]

I've been searching for this picture
I've been searching for this picture. Not this exact one, but one of the border where it meets the Baltic Sea. My mom was an American student studying German, and she went abroad to Germany for a few months (in 1984 or 85 I believe, probably around the same time as this picture). The most interesting story she told me was about when she spent a few weeks in a town along the Inner German border and the Baltic Sea. There was only a small fence that divided between East and West Germany. The locals had told her to be careful, because when the tide came in, the fence on the beach wasn't visible, and it would be very easy for her to cross accidentally. They said there had been instances of tourists walking along the beach, accidentally entering East Germany, and getting stuck there. I've always been intrigued by this story, and I've always wondered what the border looked like at the sea. Unfortunately, she did not have any pictures. As a 20 year-old American tourist, she was probably too nervous to take a picture of it. I wonder if this was the same place she was talking about.

[Home and Away]

You've found the picture...
this is the Inner German Border as it meets the Baltic. I hope you read my blog with accounts of other weird things at this border point. Thanks for commenting!