Myth or what?

Jim/Stephen, your right about growing up in other lands. my two kids had 3 years with us in moscow followed by four years in jakarta. educated at international schools. they tell me it was a brilliant way to grow up. my eldest just arrived back in St Petersburg today to finish of language lessons to get her russian language degree. travel broadens the mind eh.

After I transferred from the Cav to RMP, my first posting was 247 Pro Coy in Berlin. I was chuffed to bits, as just about everyone else in my training squad went to the Shot or Colchester. Anyway, as with every other Pro Coy in Germany, we had a small group of interpreters working for us, all of whom were nice enough people. I'll not mention any names here (just in case the information I was given was wrong), but I recently spoke with a former RMP colleague whom I served in 247 with, and when the subject got onto the interpreters, I was told that when the Wall came down, one of them, a pretty flamboyant character, simply disappeared and was never seen again. I'm not sure whether that was in fact true as the information came fourth or fifth hand, but I hope it was true, only if to add to the mystique of West Berlin. What a great place.

One personal experience was when I was on wall patrol about 2am and we had just left Tiergarten Police Post and driven up the back of the Reichstag towards the bridge at Alt Moabit. As we slowly drove along the bank of the canal, I could hear the low growling sound of an engine and we were getting close to it. We switched the lights off, which made it worse. My arse started twitching, I have to be honest here, but I nearly shat myself (pardon the French) when we pulled alongside an East German Border Guard motorboat, parked up on our side (although technically their side). I hadn't seen it and they hadn't seen us, but when we clocked each other, I'm not sure who got the biggest fright. They took off at a hell of a rate with the front of the boat looking like it had came out of the water, and I floored the VW and legged it towards the bridge. We reported it as you do, less details of our 'tactical withdrawal'.

I also recall being on desk duty when there was a failed escape attempt just north of the Staaken crossing point. The Inf Wire Patrol had called it in. After out Pl Comd had initially embarrassed himself on the radio, our patrols bombed out as did the Polizei and the Feuerwehr tipped up with a set of mobile floodlights. I was stuck on the desk so missed out on all of the excitement. The radio reports however were very open about what was going on. The Easties had placed a motorbike in front of the dead body to shield it from our lot until one of their trucks arrived and it was loaded into the back. After about an hour, everybody started to return to Stadium Bks. What we weren't aware of was that there were two 'escapees', one that they had killed and another which given the circumstances they must have been aware of as the second bloke was shot early in the morning when he made his move. They must have known that he was hiding, or that's how it appeared. Cue all patrols heading back to Staaken.