Col. Vern Pike: Checkpoint Charlie & The Berlin Wall

our guest this week on Veterans Chronicles is US Army veteran Vern Pike mr. Pike not only served during the Cold War and Vietnam but is directly connected to some of the most indelible moments of our standoff with Soviet Communism mr. Pike thanks so much for being with us thank you sir where were you born and raised sir born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania raised in three places Fort Wayne Indiana New Orleans Louisiana Bloomfield New Jersey fantastic why did you join the service September 1958 and were you drafted or no no I was a commissioned as a lieutenant from ROTC and from where Wake Forest University what you mentioned Soviet history perfect so when you once you joined oh where did you train took my officer basic at Fort Gordon Georgia in military police school and what were your assignments once he finished training oh well my first assignment was to Burma was to Fort Dix New Jersey I was supposed to stay in the Army for six and a half months active duty and seven and a half years Reserve and I'd been accepted to law school and I had the good fortune to marry the gal that I was engaged to while she was still in college and I was a young lieutenant and so my colonel suggested I got to consider stay in the army now that I had some responsibilities and he was right so I decided to stay in the army and got assigned to Burrell in 1959 and that's where a lot of what we're going to talk about happened so 1959 set the stage for those who don't know about the division of the city and so forth and where you were stationed the end of World War two the victorious Allies divided in Germany into four zones of occupation the Soviet zone American British and French zones 1956 the Western Allies ceded their occupation duties and created the new bundesrepublik Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviets created the Communists government of the German Democratic Republic in the Soviet zone of occupation it was the capital of Berlin which was 110 miles to the east of the boundary separating the Western zones from the Soviet zone and the city was divided into four sectors Soviet French British and American and our function and responsibilities were to provide law enforcement and security for the American sector of Berlin and operate the the highway control points from West Germany to Berlin there was one highway that we were allowed to use so we had a checkpoint alpha in West Germany and a checkpoint Bravo in Berlin excuse me that the first two years of my duty in Berlin as a military police duty officer your responsibilities included the operation of those two checkpoints explained checkpoint charlie that that happened shortly after the 13th of August of 1961 the Communists in Soviets sector of Berlin were faced with it with a real dilemma because they had a famine that particular year and if you wanted to if you wanted to seek freedom and you got to Berlin just walk across the street and what was happening in June July and August 61 is literally tens of thousands of East Germans were seeking freedom and they overloaded Morean felt a refugee center in the American sector of Berlin where they would come and would be flown out to West Germany to start a new life and we're talking about a fleeing of doctors lawyers engineers of bankers salespeople and craftsmen and to stop that flow they took the dramatic step of creating this barricade the first barricade was not a wall it was barbed wire and that went up on the Saturday night through 13th of August of 61 and I happened to be military police duty officer when I got a call from one of our patrol vehicles to oh you better come down here to Friedrichstrasse because there's something strange going on in the Soviet sector that might impact us so I went down there and I saw that they were digging postholes in the street of Zimmer Strasse which was right on the border putting cement posts and and tying together with barbed wire and of course the next day we found out they were doing it throughout the entire city we then established a control point because that was the only access point that the Communist authorities would allow foreign vehicles and allied vehicles to process through to go into the Soviet sector and that became checkpoint charlie alpha Bravo Charlie now for a lot of the summer from what I've read you thought you would have it a fairly relaxed time you're mainly worried about a golf course right you know politics gets into the military too we had a new commanding general that came in who was an avid golfer and I made the mistake of putting in my officer record form that I'd played golf in college and so the personnel officer was going through all the files of officers bingo out pops Pike and I wound up as the club officer at the golf course to get the place squared away because the general wanted it to be a you know first-class operation and I was out there working and the caddies all came over from East Germany they slipped through the fence that surrounded you know Berlin was surrounded by East Germany and there was a wall around that as well it wasn't just Berlin it was the it was the Soviet zone of occupation and they told me that they would probably not be able to get through much longer because there were these restrictions being placed on them so when the caddies stopped coming we knew something was up and sure enough I was still doing NP Duty Officer work so that Saturday night I was the MP duty officer and the rest as they say is history when did you actually notice the wall going up I mean so we talked about the post and the barbed wire but once I actually started pouring concrete and what they were the first wall was cinder blocks and that was I could remember they they had these engineers over there that by checkpoint charlie replacing the Barbara over these blocks and this worker looks over and I'm as far away from them as you and I are I mean because here's the political boundary and there was the wall and he looks over at me and Germany's is like not like not Wouter Martin's in sharp-eyed us along some what do you waiting for him was working as slow as I can and behind him as a Volks bullets I people's police and he looks to the left and to the right he's got this machine pistol and he says lieutenant my machine pistols empty there's no ammo what are you waiting for that was around the 1st of September so that was the that's what it was all about on the very beginning from barbed wire to two cinder blocks and then later generations they began the the serious wall let's go to October of 1961 because he were engaged in a moment that literally could have been the beginning of a third world war explain where you were and what happened I was on duty at checkpoint charlie and we had had a series of incidents general clay was president and his personal rep in Berlin and he had been the hero of the Berlin Airlift and he knew how far we could go with the Russians the East Germans the Communists decided that they wanted to force the Allies to produce identification documents to them that these Germans and we refused because we only dealt with our Soviet counterparts and general clay said if they stop a vehicle the next time this is what you're gonna do well they stopped the vehicle our Provo marshal Colonel symbolic and I his translator walked over to the east and confronted the Soviet the communist policeman the Volks bullets I and said you know knock it off we don't deal with you we deal only with the Russians and if you keep this up there's going to be trouble came back sent a vehicle over if they stopped them so we then put together our military police alert squad squad twelve soldiers in three jeeps to escort a US civilian vehicle with US forces plates and uniformed people inside and we were going to forcibly work our way into the east an armed escort the rules of engagement were very interesting I told my eighteen-year-old draftees that's what they were young and young soldiers you were the first unit to get the m14 rifle you'll have a magazine in the weapon around in the chamber safety off bayonet unshielded anyone tries to stop you shoot him those were the rules of engagement in 1961 we did that 14 times on the Friday afternoon four o'clock I'm a checkpoint charlie and F company 40th armored had a platoon of tanks that was at Tempelhof airbase and they would come down as a show of force psychological warfare they'd say a couple of hours and go back they two of the tanks had just gone back we're on the way back to Tempelhof and Maj Tyree was the company commander he was down there and he and I were smoking a cigarette and a little drugstore which is on the corner of Zimmern Friedrichstrasse and we looked down for us there's a bunch of tanks coming our way he's good Lord he said Verne get my tanks back here so I afternoon rush hour in Berlin 4:30 I head back towards temple off and as I get up to temple off the platoon of tanks were just turning into temple off and Captain Bob Lanfear was in the in the lead tank and I said Bob we got trouble of checkpoint charlie follow me back and he goes whoopee and turned the tanks around and we head back to Friedrichstrasse oh by now my boss the Provo marshal is at Checkpoint Charlie and he's talking to general clay on the phone and sure enough those tanks are I mean they're there now they're in position and our platoon was in position general clay said are they Soviet tanks are they we don't know what are they they're our t54 tanks that will we know are they so via to read German the colonel says we don't know because they painted it overall the bumper markings and all their uniforms had insignia of rank taken off they had black leather jackets with black Soviet tanker leather caps in general clay said you find out because if there eat German tanks we go to war so Colonel Sai Baba determines his Verne take my driver and go over there and find out whether they're Soviet or East German tanks yes sir so getting the sedan we drive over pull around back behind the formation I want to say there were 11 tanks or two column of fives and then there was one up front and I pulled in behind the last tanks and got out and there was nobody around there were no vote bones that were no Soviets and I walked around the tank and sure enough they painted over the bumper markings I'm a 25 year old lieutenant my orders are find out in his tanks they are so I climbed up in the tank went down inside acrylic script on the instrument panel that's Russian the driver was handy enough to leave a Red Army newspaper so I grabbed the newspaper climbed back out of the turret and as I'm jumping down I see a whole bunch of soldiers up behind the lead tank obviously getting a briefing so specialist McCart was the driver as the cart let's go to let's go briefing well here I'm talking and then we'll know so we go up bond there's about 50 of them there and I don't know what his rank was he obviously was the leader was oddly an officer and he speak in Russian and he looks up the cz two American MPs I didn't speak that much Russian just enough to get along but I don't know what he said but I said Marquardt let's get the hell out of here so we got in the car went back to checkpoint Charlie and my Colonel said whose tanks are they said they're Soviet sir so I told him he said you did what I said sir you told me to find I do it here's the Red Army newspaper their Soviet he's here you tell general clay so I sir a lieutenant Pike there Soviet tanks and I told the general whose tanks they were it must have been two or three seconds but he was like an hour and a half pause and he said thank you lieutenant let me talk to your colonel again the significance of that exchange was that clay forced the Soviets to finally recognize that they were responsible to secure their sector like we were ours and not the kind not the Voges bullets I that was that was an exciting time just say no more problems after that oh yeah oh yeah we had a lot of we had a lot of a lot of problems with our Soviet allies what are you thinking what's going through your mind when somebody tells you this could be the start of a new war if it's an East German tank as you're heading over there getting ready to investigate what are you thinking I've been asked that question a lot of times and my honest response to you is that I was more concerned about my duty to do what I was told to do and the implications of what we were about to do really didn't register with me my task must if my task was to identify those tanks we knew they were t-54s but I had to I had to tell my Colonel that they were Soviet tanks or East German tanks and that was my focus and you mentioned that there were some more skirmishes I know one was literally a tug of war over someone trying to leave East Berlin we had I was up we had a observation post in the top floor of this apartment building that was in the corner of Zimmer Strasse and Friedrichstrasse over and I was unfortunately maybe fortunately but I was up there and the observation post with my soldiers and there was an individual who was it was a a teacher in a East Berlin High School and he'd gotten a an Old World War two hike jacket with corporal stripes on an eighth Air Force patch and he took two pieces of brass disks and with a nail he edged us in them and attached them to his collar and he's walking down Friedrichstrasse and he's saluting the vopos and they're saluting and he gets to this white line which was the political boundary between Berlin Mitte and berlin kreuzberg and he collapsed well he's to vopa's we'll remember in the eye he's trying to flee so they grab him by the feet to pull him back into East Berlin and I had two n peas that were right there on the white line just you know standing there doing when they grabbed him by the shoulders and I got a tug of war going on and my my sergeant john Dudek comes out of the Check Point building and runs up there takes out his MP billy club and he pops the two vopos over the head they go out to mps hall this guy into West Berlin and we turned him over the Berlin police but I was all I could do was watch my soldiers I Hey they were magnificent that's amazing so did he get to stay in the West oh yeah I assume so because they turned him over to the Berlin police and they they sent him immediately to I'm sure Marine felt a refugee center you must have had quite a few conversations with those guys after that oh yeah oh yeah it's I've put him in for a medal they they did not get the middle then in February of 1962 yes you have another interesting moment at a place that's gotten much more famous now because of a movie bridge of spies yeah yeah four o'clock and then again a Friday afternoon colonel symbolic calls me into his office and he said Bern I want all the Germans out of the Provo Marshall office MP station the German civilian workers secretaries what not German police he want out we finally about quarter to five got them out you don't tell the German to leave an hour and a half early I mean they their work environment they finally got them out and three civilians came in and went downstairs into our detention cell area and one of them was put in the detention cell and two others were sitting outside the entire night the next morning at 8:30 I get a call I was duty officer that day and Colonel symbolic says Vern take me to alpha 10 which was the freedom bridge we got to alpha 10 and he said all those border policemen west-berlin border policemen put him in the guard shack on the floor so they can't look out which I did and in about 20 minutes a there was a telephone in the guard shack my sergeant at checkpoint charlie I knew nothing about this but I'm certain this is sergeant Clint we've forgotten his name but we he said the student has been released so I've motioned to Colonel symbolic and I I did this and the three people get out of the Provo marshals car and they walk out to the middle of the bridge and three people came from the Soviet side and walked out in the middle of the bridge exchanged the two in the middle the three came back got in Colonel symbolic scar and he says take me to Tempelhof ASAP morning rush hour now it's about 20 miles from the freedom bridge to Tempelhof the other side of Berlin so we finally get temple off air base and it's like a hangar you know there's an overhang at Tempelhof and the airplane is underneath that and the propellers are turning and these three guys can run up the steps and my colonel says you know who that is I said no sirs that's Gary Powers we had Colonel Abel as a guest in our hotel that free-cos evening and I'll tell you it was a magnificent operation no one in Berlin in the military chain of command or the diplomatic chain of command knew anything about that operation it was incredible it was perfect nobody knew anything about quite an exchange it said except my colonel this is the problem and apparently he got the call from the CIA station chief you know it's Bob and said they were good and that's what happened it was it was quite an operation it's amazing yes powers of course was the famous u2 pilot who was yes sir shot down over the Soviet Union when did you how long did you stay in Berlin man I stayed until October of 1962 came back to the states resigned my commission got out of the army and worked I went into the pharmaceutical industry and my wife and I woke up one morning and said you know all the things that we thought we didn't like about the military we find the same thing out here so we enjoyed what we were doing in the military so I requested recall to active duty the October Cuban Missile Crisis had just finished up and I went back on active duty and stayed for 30 years why don't you go to Vietnam my first time was 1965 66 I was a company commander I had MPs in 14 locations in Vietnam we were outside of Saigon we were the only MPs in in Vietnam that probably have I cherished that assignment because it was in a combat environment and my soldiers were draftees I later committed that a battalion of volunteers in Germany and a brigade of volunteers in Germany in the 80s the late 70s and early 80s I'll take that company of draftees any day they were wonderful citizens it's ok their nation called and they they came from every walk of life you know I had PhDs and guys that never graduated high school and they they meshed they they had a sense of urgency about in 1965 the Vietcong were on the run I left in 66 we could have declared a military victory come home but they were they were focused they were dedicated they were they were mission oriented and they served their country for two years and got on with their lives and the secondary 1970-71 was totally different it was towards the end of the conflict and it was like a bunch of rats fleeing a sinking ship nobody wanted to be the last one out very difficult as a I was a battalion executive officer for six months and and went to the division Provo Marshall office and the Americal division I would rather not talk about that well let's lighten the mood because the story you were telling us just before we started taping is that you were at a USO show starring the great Bob Hope and yeah something very special happened yes my dad was the technical director of the Bob Hope show an NBC television and mr. Hope comes to Vietnam every year and this was December of 1970 and one of dads engineers accompanied mr. Hope on the tour my father said if you can't get my son to say hi to Bob Hope don't bother coming back so I helicopter landed on our firebase and they took me over to Freedom hill and Danang to the Bob Hope show took me up on the stage say hi to Bob he puts his arm over my shoulder and says boy you've grown since I saw you last yeah we were just making small talk about my dad used to bring Bob Hope and Les Brown out to the house for dinner because my mom was a great cook and this got them out of the hotel and out of the you know the commercial eateries and we were just recounting those things it was it was very very nice he's a wonderful wonderful man he was a genuine real honest-to-god person just there was nothing fake about him at all yeah what did that do to lift your spirits on that tough tour absolutely yeah absolutely Martha Raye was also another one of the great Giants I've bumped into her twice she in 1965 she went down to Kanto and the Mekong Delta to get to dedicate a brand-new Esther Williams swimming pool that the Special Forces had arranged to be brought in this fiberglass swimming pool they threw her in the water I happened to see that so in 1970 she helicopters into my firebase she gets off the helicopter and she's now a lieutenant colonel and I'm a major so I salute her and I said ma'am it's good to see you again she said when did we meet before so I started Lee she said oh my god you were there when that happened she you know what that woman did God love her she was a registered nurse and she was an officer in the Army Nurse Corps reservists and she would do these USO tours and volunteer to stay in Vietnam for 89 days to work in hospitals yes sir and she did that multiple times she is buried in the Special Forces Cemetery Fort Bragg well deserved oh absolutely why not think about how important that was to a lot of different celebrities back then oh the story I could tell you stories til the cows come home in that in that era we had people from Hollywood that were marvelous they came over on a regular basis those are just two examples any others that stand out immediately yes but I can't remember her name she was a Hollywood darling and she's now in her late 70s and still who's in Oz over her experiences in Vietnam I'll probably remember her name so after Vietnam where'd you go that in your career between tours in Vietnam the army sent me to graduate school to go teach at West Point and I've taught up at West Point in the Department Social Sciences for a couple of years had a tour in the Pentagon after Vietnam and deputy chief staff operations went to command a battalion in Stuttgart Germany came back to the Army War College returned to Stuttgart they know as the g5 of the seventh Corps staff and then activated took command of the MP brigade in 7th Corps from there I came back as an army fellow at the Army War College to do research papers and write speeches for the army chief of staff wound up taking elements of the 7th Special Forces Group to Grenada in 1983 84 went on the Joint Staff than j5 for three years went over to National Defense University from that last year of active duty and retired in 1988 started my own business and in marketing unrelated to the Defense Department okay and then retired from that and moved to North Carolina have enjoyed retirement ever since happily ever after absolutely what are you most proud of when you think about your service to our country well it's 30 years of I was very I was very fortunate to be a commander and from platoon level to Brigade and the opportunity to to lead soldiers is the thing I'm personally proudest of wonderful American soldiers they're just you know men women the opportunity to serve my country I'm deeply patriotic I have seen the rest of the world and I've seen the bad parts of the world I've seen communism it does not work I've seen what people will do to be free to see 77 year old women hanging off the bed sheets from the seventh floor apartment in the Bernauer Strasse in Berlin to become free and dropping into a fire net fireman's init that that really really impacts you and we in this country take that for granted and it's not free you've got to fight for it and I think that's what we in the uniformed services that's one of our missions is to make sure that we always keep this country free but we've got to make sure that our people understand that there's a price to be paid for that when we had a draft which we no longer have most American men got drafted or were eligible for the draft they found out very quickly and I wish we could have some form of national service for our young people not necessarily the military but kind of a give back for a couple of years we've we we have so much in this country we take for granted so yeah that's what I'm proudest of the opportunity I had to lead soldiers well mr. Pike we thank you so much for your service to our country over several decades and we thank you very much for your time with us today thank you sir appreciate it very much US Army veteran Verne Pike served during the Cold War served during Vietnam and joining us today on Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg caramba and this is Veterans Chronicles you

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 2,075

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, colonel vern pike, checkpoint charlie berlin wall, us military police in berlin, exchange of francis gary powers and colonel abel, checkpoint charlie (tourist attraction), bethesda naval hospital, assassination of president john f. kennedy (november 22 1963), berlin wall goes up 1961, vietnam veterans stories

Id: RJamWxK9duA

Length: 29min 33sec (1773 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2019