Troublous Berlin

In Berlin, trouble comes where least expected. For five years the U.S. military post has operated a twice-weekly sightseeing tour of the city without incident. One day last week four U.S. buses, bearing 73 tourists, including twelve children, were returning from their customary swing through the Soviet sector when they ran into a tense, but typical, Berlin situation.

A group of Soviet-zone Volkspolizei, with police dogs, had just arrived at the Potsdamer Platz. Their mission: to prevent Germans from the British sector from distributing leaflets in the Soviet sector. As the four U.S. buses slowly circled the Potsdamer Platz, the tense Volkspolizei were facing a scornful West Berlin crowd safe behind the border rail of the British sector. A bus tourist, Charles Myers of Kansas City, tried to photograph the scowling Volkspolizei. The police spotted him, rushed to stop the bus.

The bus drivers stepped on the gas, tore into the British sector. Walter Waaske, driver of one bus, told what happened next: "All of a sudden a policeman turned his pistol toward my bus and shot. The bullet hit the windshield, and I could not see through it. I drove as fast as possible toward Potsdamer Strasse. Two more bullets hit the bus. One went through the coat of an officer sitting behind me." One of the passengers was 13-year-old Kristin Norstad, daughter of Lieut. General Norstad, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. She called the incident "the most exciting adventure since Hopalong Cassidy." In all, the police fired 12 to 15 shots.

Major General Lemuel Mathewson, U.S. commander in Berlin, in a note to Sergei A. Dengin, Soviet-zone representative on the Four-Power Commission, charged the Volkspolizei with "irresponsible and outrageous action," demanded punishment. Dengin replied that American soldiers in the buses had incited "West sector rowdies" against the police. Dengin, however, made a personal apology to Mathewson.

Two days later, more trouble broke out at Dreilinden, on the line between the Russian zone and the Western sectors of Berlin. A woman in an automobile screamed for help. After West German police had rescued her, she said that she was Johanna Buechner, 30, secretary of the former East German Minister of Heavy Industry, Fritz Selbermann. She had fled to the Western sector, and the two East German police in the automobile had kidnaped her and were taking her back to the Russian area. The Western police arrested one of the East German policemen. Slamming down the zone barrier, the East German guards threatened to keep the international highway closed until their captured comrade was returned. An hour later, the barrier went up again. The arrested East German policeman had asked for and obtained asylum in the Western sector of Berlin.

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