Six 11-man teams, each with their own mission and target, speaking the language and capable of disguising themselves as a German worker or an East German soldier, carried whatever arms or tools of the trade were needed for the task. On constant alert with a two-hour “string,” the 90 men that made up the unit at any one time walked the streets of Berlin planning how they would survive if the balloon went up. Some 800 men served there, from 1956 until 1990, when the unit closed down after the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. European Command, few were aware that a Special Forces unit existed in Berlin. Besides the senior officers of the Berlin Brigade and U.S. The unit, known to the outside world only as Detachment ‘A’ Berlin, was referred to as “Special Forces Berlin” in the Army’s secret war plans. It was pure unconventional warfare, much like the Office of Strategic Services of World War II, except they were already trained and working in their potential operational area as an underground organization.
standard-issue guns, including the M2 carbine and M1911A1 pistol. When men from the 10th Special Forces Group arrived in Berlin in 1956, they used U.S. A formidable and-some would say-suicidal task for the men chosen to serve there. They would help to slow down a Soviet advance by sabotaging the all-important railway connections around Berlin, report intelligence on the enemy, and raise guerrilla forces to fight the communists inside and outside Berlin. In reality, it was a “Hail Mary” plan-a means to quickly infiltrate the teams directly into enemy territory to wreak havoc behind the lines. Army in Europe realized having six Special Forces “A-Teams” deep inside communist East Germany would be an ace in the hole should the Cold War turn hot. The unit was sent to Berlin when the Commander of the U.S. Army Special Forces unit stationed in West Berlin beginning in 1956. They were armed and prepared for any eventuality, part of a clandestine U.S. In their civilian clothes, they looked no different than any other West Berliners, except they weren’t. They waited until it was calm before they slipped out of their hide, through the forest, and back into the city. The guns and sling shot went back inside their coats when it was clear they were no longer needed. The observers clicked off their stop watch-five minutes had elapsed. Three more guards jumped out and, for a moment, there was confusion as everyone tried to figure out what had happened. The Wall was meant to prevent people from getting out of the German Democratic Republic, not into it.Īn East German military truck came rumbling down the access road and stopped in front of the tower. But they were looking into East Germany, not toward West Berlin. Two guards tumbled out of the tower, looking for the source of the disturbance. The sling shot sang, and the pebble flew across the strip, into the kennel, hitting one of the Alsatians.
He quickly ensured a round was chambered and replied, “Ready.”
Just in case the guards decide to get out of hand, he thought. He loaded a smooth pebble into the sling and whispered, “Ready?” The other man put down his East German Zeiss Jena 10X 50 mm binoculars and pulled his own weapon out, a suppressed High Standard H-D Military in. One of the two men pulled an odd weapon out of his coat pocket-a heavy-duty slingshot. The dogs provided early warning of any intrusion into the border area and were the object of interest for the two men. Under the tower, a wire mesh kennel housed several East German working dogs. Two men huddled in the bush on the West Berlin side of the notorious “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.” They intently scanned the East German Border Guard tower opposite them, about 50 meters across the so-called “Death Strip.” The strip was not mined-it was just a wide open area of carefully manicured sand that was covered by the guards’ machine guns, mostly the East German version of the Soviet AKM assault rifle, the MPi-KM.
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