Spree on the Spree

None of the East German border guards were suspicious one morning last week when the comfortable old Friedrich Wolf slipped its mooring and chugged down the River Spree (pronounced Shpray), which for two miles divides East and West Berlin. The 500-ton boat was, after all, just part of the Communist "White Fleet," the line that runs excursions for deserving comrades up and down the tangled river and canal network of East Berlin.

Carefully, the old tub hugged the right --Communist--side of the Spree, in compliance with strict orders to stay as far as possible from the West Berlin bank. Suddenly, the steamer veered off course, headed straight across the river to forbidden territory. At once, the Grepos (border police) opened fire from the shore, from a pier in midriver, and from a bridge 300 yds. away--for this could only mean that another batch of defectors had found a new method of escape.

The cops were right. Having outwitted the Wall-builders in the air, on the ground and underground, Berliners had now found a route for mass escapes by water. On the boat were 14 East Germans, eight employees of the White Fleet, five of their wives and girl friends, and a five-month-old infant. The night before, the cook and the steward had laid the groundwork for the plot at a party aboard the Friedrich Wolf by getting the captain and engineer drunk. After several hours of champagne, beer, schnapps and hilarity, the boat's chief officers staggered to bed.

The captain did not wake up until the clatter of gunshots began hours later. By then, Communist bullets were zinging through every part of the ship, but the men wisely had brought steel plates up to the bridge to protect their helmsman, a 19-year-old mechanic called Bodo. Huddled on the deck below were his shipmates, including two winsome East Berlin girls named Christine and Lieselotte. As they rammed the West Berlin shore, the refugees leaped out behind piles of lumber.

The Communist cops kept shooting until West German police blasted back. "Pinch me, so I will realize I am alive and out of Communism," said one of the ringleaders, Cook Joerg Linde, 22, as he stumbled into the arms of the West Berlin cops. By then, the released captain already was glumly steering his craft back toward its East Berlin dock, doubtless aware that his hangover was nothing compared with the headache he faced when his Communist bosses got hold of him.

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