Memoirs Of A Cold War Son

6. Maneuvers

chapter 6 Maneuvers Recalling 1961 here will not resolve the debates among historians over Khrushchev’s intentions, Kennedy’s strength of will, or the likelihood of war over Berlin. I simply want to say this is how it appeared to a junior officer in a battalion of v Corps. This is how I remember it: before we knew there would be a Berlin crisis or, once it arrived, that it would be the war’s last European showdown; before America changed its self-image forever by committing a generation younger than mine to deadly combat in Vietnam; before anyone on the planet could imagine that v Corps and Russian troops would one day cooperate to keep the peace in Bosnia. I remember thousands of fragments. Sometimes these turn up haphazardly, answering impromptu signals that have no apparent design. Sometimes they accept conscious invitations to come help me teach, write, or review my life. In both types of recall, memory has proven more coherent than I would have guessed before I started this book. Most of the fragments gather under four objectives : completing military service, learning more about the Germans, studying modern European history at Oxford, finding love. These groupings are not recent inventions. I remember assuming, in my euphoria early in 1961, that they were complementary pursuits on my way toward the “world’s fight” while Europe was at peace and my family could do without me. I remember believing that my life, like the public events that chart history, moved forward with purpose — until the Vienna summit of early June. The year opened on an optimistic note with major liaison assignments and the inauguration of President Kennedy. During the week of 9–13 January I was attached to the Bundeswehr’s iii Korps in Koblenz. The commander of v Corps, Lt. Gen. Frederic J. Brown, wanted to improve coordination with the Germans, and the staff of v Corps Artillery, commanded by Brig. Gen. William Harris, had learned that I spoke German. In Koblenz I worked closely with Col. Wunderlich, commander of iii Korps Artillery. A veteran of the Second World War, he recalled his ambivalent attitude toward Hitler as we walked along the Rhine one day after lunch, pausing at its con- fluence with the Mosel River to look at the Deutsches Eck, the massive stone foundation that once supported an enormous equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I. Like the majority of officers in the new Bundeswehr, most of the officers I met at iii Korps had served in the Wehrmacht during the war. One had a wooden leg; “I forgot the other one in Russia,” he laughed. They seemed genuinely interested in my ideas for cooperation between our forces. Some of them complained about the uneven quality of their recruits, but I was impressed by what I saw. During a coffee break one morning in their headquarters, I walked over to the window to watch a platoon march by below. A major asked me how long I thought those soldiers had been in the army. “About four weeks,” I guessed, thinking back to Fort Bragg. “Three days,” he said, smiling at the implicit contrast between national learning curves. I visited a unique German institution on a hill across the Rhine from Koblenz: the Schule für Innere Führung. The term “Innere Führung” means literally “inner (or internal) leadership.” A looser and more helpful translation is “leadership and character training.” The school was established in 1957 to instruct officers and ncos in democratic values, the compatibility between democratic citizenship and military service, the subordination of the military establishment to the civilian control of the defense minister and the Bundestag. The school’s founders had wished to prevent the Bundeswehr from Maneuvers : 169 becoming an undemocratic state within the state like the Reichswehr in the Weimar Republic. They had also sought to overcome the strong antimilitary sentiment among young Germans who deplored Germany’s history of militarism and supported the Social Democratic Party’s opposition to rearmament. A portrait of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry hung in the outer office of the school’s director, evoking loftier ideals than efficiency and obedience. That was a tall order for any military school but especially for German officers who had served in the Wehrmacht and now had to rebuild German military strength in a hurry. Back at iii Korps, I did...