Friday, Jan. 04, 1963

One Last Run

Hans Weidner had been hoping for months to escape drab East Germany and make his way to the West. The odds were against him, for Weidner, 40, was a cripple on crutches who lived in the village of Neugersdorf, 115 miles southeast of the frontier of freedom. But Hans Weidner did have one major asset, the 30-passenger bus that he operated for the local Communist regime. It was an ugly thing, and ancient. Its chassis creaked, and the engine coughed; a cream-colored coat of paint could not disguise the welts and bruises of two decades of chugging service. In fact, the bus was ready for the junk pile when Weidner decided to press it into service for one last run.

Sharp Blades. The hazards would be great on the journey to the border; so Weidner signed up a fellow villager, Juergen Wagner, 22, to take the wheel. Eight days before Christmas, the pair began the feverish preparations in Weidner's garage. First Weidner and Wagner attached a heavy snowplow to the front of the bus, not to plow snow, but to scoop away the heavy obstacles they knew awaited them at roadblocks ahead.

To all six lugs on each front wheel they bolted sharp blades of the toughest steel, affixed so that the whirling edges would chop barbed wire to bits. Then they wedged one-quarter-inch sections of steel plate inside the bus to stop bullets.

At last all was ready. On Christmas Eve, Weidner and Wagner piled their wives and four children aboard, not forgetting three tons of household belongings. For added protection the plotters shoveled a ton of coal and potatoes into the back of the bus. Then they chugged off north toward Berlin along back roads to escape Communist patrols. Just before they reached the Wall, they planned to swing west in order to enter the East-West Autobahn leading to the U.S. sector of the city.

En route, the radiator froze in the subzero weather. That fixed, they were only a few miles farther when a tire blew out. The kids were crying and the wives shivering with cold and panic when, at last, they arrived at Drewitz, the most heavily guarded checkpoint on the entire Autobahn to Berlin. It was no time to stop and reconsider.

Flying Potatoes. "Wah-ah, wah-ah," shrieked the police-type klaxons that Weidner had thoughtfully installed in advance. The Communist guards obediently raised the first of three barriers. But what was a bus doing on emergency duty? Suddenly the shooting began--too late. Wagner, at 40 m.p.h., was already crashing through the second barrier 100 yards ahead, then the third, only 20 yards away.

Its windshield smashed, its passengers shaken, its cargo of coal and potatoes in every corner of the cab, the old bus finally lurched to a stop a few miles down the road where the Communists no longer mattered--at the U.S. checkpoint, a foot or two inside West Berlin.

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