Checkpoint Charlie detainee tells his story

CHECKPOINT Charlie was where Americans and Soviets stared each other down, just yards apart on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall, for almost 30 years.

It was the site of the infamous Berlin Crisis of 1961, when the two superpowers rolled in 10 tanks each and a descent into conventional warfare between the two superpowers loomed.
President Kennedy visited it just before his ham-fisted ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, while the world watched in horror as Peter Fechter was left to bleed to death there after his attempted escape.
The site of Checkpoint Charlie is now a must-see for tourists in Berlin, but at the height of the Cold War, it was a truly frightening place for the visitor, as veteran Ennis travel agent Tom Mannion recalled, just after the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Wall’s collapse.
He remembers his visit to East Berlin as a chastening experience. “Pan America were doing a flight to Berlin so they took out a few travel agents and some journalists. We had the option of going on a coach tour into East Berlin or going on a guided tour on foot or just doing your own thing. The majority of us went off independently, I think there were about eight of us in the party,” he says of his arrival into the Soviet zone.
While he found that West Berlin had recovered from the war, the East was very different. “It was easy to see East Berlin at the time, there was only one street restored. The rest of it was the exact same as if the war was just over.”
Not being inspired by the rebuilding efforts of the Communists was one thing but his encounter with the border guards left him scared.
On the way back across Checkpoint Charlie, Tom and two of his party were detained. “It so happened that I was in the last three and we were just going through Checkpoint Charlie. There were East German soldiers on one side and West Germans on the other but we wouldn’t have known one from the other. Just out of the blue, they gestured us on and we had to follow them. They walked us over to a door, pushed it open and they didn’t push us in but they gesticulated at us. Naturally, we didn’t understand what they were saying and we knew nothing. They closed the door and turned double locks on it.”
While he was in custody for a relatively short time, he was riddled with fear. “I remember one of the people went to smoke a cigarette and they were told in no uncertain terms not to. We were very nervous. We were physical wrecks because we didn’t know when we’d get out. It felt like hours, there was a frightening feeling of when, if ever, will we get out of here? Will we get shot? Eventually they came in, opened the door and pushed us out like cattle but we were glad to be pushed out by that stage.”
Back on the West German side, a local man gave him some insight into what the border guards may have been thinking.
“Our friends were on the other side at a streetside café and they were very worried as to what might have happened to us. They knew we had been immediately behind them. The café owner said that there may have been an attempted escape and they could have brought us in for safety because there would have been shooting. There was shooting there every other day.
“He asked if by any chance were we laughing or joking. Of course, I’m always laughing and joking and we just laughed after he said that. We said we had been laughing and he said they thought you were laughing at them and that would have been a very serious offence in their mind.”
Relieved to have got back to safety and impressed by West Berlin, Tom has remained very reluctant to head back there. “That was enough for me,” he jokes.