From the S&S archives:
Looking down on Berlin's Wall

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BERLIN — Seen from the air, the cruel slash of the Wall and barbed wire across the midriff of the city loses much of its naked ugliness.

Sometimes you even have to look for it — from a height of about 800 feet the "death strip" seems no more than a carefully raked field, concrete tank traps look like toys, and the Wall throws hardly a shadow.

Yet the peculiar situation of Berlin manifests itself plainly enough from the rear seats of a UHIB (Huey) helicopter from the Army Aviation Det stuttering along the jagged zigzag line that separates West from East Berlin.

Prejudice may play a trick on the imagination, but the impression is definite: On "our," the Western side, things seem lighter, busier, cleaner, more alive.

By contrast, beyond the Wall gray — a particularly depressing gray — is the predominant color, and gray is the mood that hangs over everything like a soiled rag, sunshine or no.

East Berlin is a city of more than a million people; yet you find yourself straining to detect details of life: a trickle of cars, the weathervanes of smoke and steam rising from factories and power plants, and just a few people, ant-like, in the distance.

Here and there, the drab picture is punctuated by new office and apartment buildings, bright and functional, especially in the government quarter around Unter den Linden, the broad boulevard that terminates at the Brandenburg Gate and is East Berlin's embassy row.

And in the distance, at Alexanderplatz, a half-completed television tower stabs through the haze, already higher than any structure east or west and visible from just about any point in the city. It will be East Berlin's newest landmark, 1,188 feet high when finished in 1970.

THE MEN of Berlin Brigade's Army Aviation Det who run the helicopter patrols don't concern themselves much with the intriguing panorama stretching beneath their slowly cruising "sightseeing" platforms.

Their job is strictly the aerial surveillance of the border surrounding West Berlin like a noose — miles of fortifications that have become virtually escape-proof.

These whirlybird patrols supplement other border reconnaissance missions on the ground run by the Berlin Brigade — jeep patrols by two infantry battalions and boat patrols on border waterways by military police.

The flights have been on a regular basis since the late 1940s, but they gained added significance when the East German regime built the Wall in 1961.

The small detachment keeps its fleet of six UH1Bs, one L19 reconnaissance aircraft and one U8 Delta command plane in hangars at Tempelhof Air Base, just a few feet from the commercial side of the airport.

The outfit is commanded by Col. Williams S. Cox, from Knoxville, Tenn., who looks as though nothing could ever shake his pleasant, easy-going constitution.

A Vietnam veteran — as are all eight officers in the unit and most of its 14 enlisted men — Cox regards the Berlin duty as vital, but routine.

Giving a brief rundown on the detachment's operations, he said that the unit accumulates from 1,200 to 1,300 flying hours a year, running at least a short flight daily unless weather conditions prevent it.

And once or twice a week — again weather permitting — the detachment flies a long run covering the U.S., British and French sector borders in detail.

A REGULAR patrol crew taking off from Tempelhof consists of pilot, copilot and a crew chief. A Brigade G2 observer, who takes over the actual reconnaissance job, is later picked up at Andrews Barracks in Lichterfelde. The aircraft usually carry no armament but remain in radio contact with Tempelhof until touchdown.

"Each flight has to be filed in advance with air traffic control," and Cox. "Before takeoff the crew might be briefed on certain objectives along the border. But generally we just keep our eyes open, trying to observe any changes along the Communist border fortifications."

The typical throb of the low-flying helicopter may be heard over the city at any time day or night and the route always varies to keep the Reds guessing.

"No incidents involving the Russians or East Germans as long as I'm here," said the colonel, who took over late in 1966, coming to the Divided City directly from South Vietnam.

"The flights are mostly over built-up areas, though, and so the pilots have to be alert for tall structures like towers and tall cranes because they fly fairly low."

"One big hazard during the fall season" he added with a smile," is kids flying their kites. They can really get in the way."

Night flights, chiefly for training purposes, present no problem because the Reds keep the Wall and death strip well lit — not exactly for the benefit of the detachment though.

"The patrol might sight some flares, but that's about all," Cox said.

He pointed out new pilots have to fly at least 10 missions in the jump seat to familiarize themselves with the tricky meanderings of Berlin's Iron Curtain before they're on their own.

ASIDE from the patrols, the detachment does brigade troop lifts in support of exercises and gives border orientation flights to visitors, including French and British officials who don't maintain choppers in Berlin.

Only rarely do the whirlybird crews, usually flying at 600 to 800 feet, sight any Communist aircraft beyond the Wall. But they do have occasional contacts with the other side, though not exactly friendly.

On flights supplying the Army MPs assigned to guard duty in the Steinstuecken exclave, for instance, the copters have to drop down on a tiny plot completely surrounded by East German territory.

"When we get down there," said CWO Eugene Kollar of Minneapolis, "the Commies are so close they practically breathe down our necks.

"One day I called a 'Good morning' over to them, and this one Vopo (East German guard) came right back in perfect English, 'It isn't a very good morning in Vietnam.'"

Kollar could have told him that, too. He joined the detachment in January 1967 after recuperating from a bullet wound in the face suffered in South Vietnam. He was hit by a machine-gun slug when the Viet Cong shot up his gunship and still shows a scar to remind him of the experience.

It's a change of pace from the hot action in Southeast Asia to the cold war of Berlin, but Kollar and the other fliers in the detachment take it with grace.

Theirs is a job which puts them face to face with a different system every day-literally, as it were, when they swoop by the wooden guard towers just on the other side of the border and get the once-over by submachine gun-toting, binocular-peering Vopos.

Being stationed on Air Force home grounds doesn't bother the Army fliers a bit.

"We use all the Air Force facilities here," said Cox, "and some of us have even joined their athletic teams. We enjoy a very fine relationship with them."