With much of the United States beginning to break free from COVID-19-era restrictions, a friend of mine was reminded of another time he witnessed others embracing freedom. In 1989, Army Pfc. Jeff Phillips was stationed in Germany. The oppressive communist East German government was showing signs of loosening its brutal control. Excitement was building along the border. What was happening?
Phillips wasn’t sure, but in the finest tradition of American junior enlisted men, he sensed a party. He and a few soldier pals took leave to go see the Berlin Wall.
His commander advised them not to be stupid. “Don’t get arrested or climb the wall.” They were there to observe, not interfere. The last thing the Army needed was soldiers causing an international incident at this critical moment.
Phillips said the reality of the event wasn’t like what the history books might lead you to believe. The East Germans started it gradually, “like a bar has a soft opening,” first letting a few East Germans visit West Germany for short periods. News reporters, looking for drama, handed people sledgehammers or pickaxes, asking them to put on a show by hitting the wall.
“The wall wasn’t really coming down. All that was happening was the Stasi weren’t shooting East Germans who climbed up on the wall,” Phillips said. But freedom, once sensed after a long oppression, is like a crack in a dam. It has a way of bursting forth in a flood of goodness. Soon, so many East Germans were coming through to the West that the communists couldn’t have stopped them even if they had wanted to. On the fourth day of Phillips’s leave, “it was like a flood. People came from everywhere, using axes and … heavy equipment to knock down the wall. Brothers and sisters, kids and parents were reunited.”
“As the East Germans crossed the wall, everybody was hugging them. … We couldn’t get close to it because there were so many people. People were crying everywhere as the East Germans came across, asking about their relatives.”
West German officials yelled through bullhorns, “The wall is open. It’s free. You don’t have to be afraid.”
West German vendors gave their food away to the incoming East Germans.
Many people physically attacked the wall. Phillips said, “It was different when the East Germans hit the wall. This was the thing that kept them from their families, that kept them impoverished and kept them down. They tore at that wall with everything they had.”
Some Germans offered sledgehammers to Phillips and his friends so they could take a crack at the wall, but the Americans declined, knowing this was a German affair.
Some East Germans returned to their houses for the night. Others crossed the line with everything they owned because they were never going back. Many of them looked like they’d traveled in time from the 1940s. Everything they owned looked homemade and 40 years old. “They were tired and dirty, filled with the relief that they didn’t have to go back,” Phillips explained.
Germans know how to party. “It was really fun,” Phillips said. By his fifth day of leave, West Berlin was packed. “It was like Woodstock — nonstop partying, drinking, and celebration. I was never so glad to get back to post.”
Friends, that may be the only time a young American soldier has ever voluntarily fled a big party.
“At 22, I couldn’t appreciate what was really happening because I hadn’t grown up in an environment like East Germany. We went there to take advantage of the party, not as much because we were thrilled by the freedom,” Phillips admitted.
They were young American privates. Like many American soldiers, they were too busy living to realize they were living history. We can only hope the tide of freedom will continue to advance everywhere.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
