"I Thee Endow"

A boy and a girl stood before an elderly clergyman in an 18th-Century, bomb-damaged Berlin church. The girl, blonde, in her late 'teens, was well dressed, well fed, carefully made up. She spoke for the two: "Will you marry us?" The silent youth, in his early twenties, looked better fed than most Germans, although his blue suit did not fit him well. The girl readily produced her identification papers, but he said: "I lost mine in the bombing . . . she can vouch for me."

The Pfarrer noticed his accent and began to question him. The boy admitted: "I am an American." He pleaded: "But please marry us. I'll pay 200 cigarets and 20 candy bars. How about it?" Although soldiers in the U.S. Army of Occupation are forbidden to marry German girls, the German minister knew of no law which would bar him from performing the ceremony. He married them.

Points & Counterpoints. The bridegroom was a member of the 78th ("Lightning") Division. He knew that if U.S. authorities learned of the marriage they would probably annul it and punish him. But with only 23 points, he faced another year in Berlin, so the chance seemed well worth taking.

In another year, he also figured, the marriage ban might be relaxed. U.S. authorities might even be transporting German wives of G.I.s to the U.S.

For last week's secret ceremony was neither the first nor the last of its kind. Clandestine G.I.-Fraeulein marriages are expected to increase as winter sets in. A G.I. husband can provide his Frau with extra food, fuel to heat her room.

Outside the pale of secret marriages is a more densely populated illicit area. In a single Dahlem block of 52 swank apartments occupied by U.S. officers, two-thirds of the tenants had German mistresses whom they supplied with coffee, cake and sandwiches from the Army mess--besides food received in packages from U.S. womenfolk.

Chaplains were unable to supply a solution. Said one tentatively: "Maybe the ban on marriages will follow in the footsteps of the fraternization ban"--which was lifted when nature's laws proved more compelling than the Articles of War.

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