Life is a series of journeys, not one long trip with the final destination in mind. The journeys we take through life are often not the ones we expect to take, nor are they even the ones we want to to take. Yet with each twist and turn of life we must push on, for we have no other choice. We love, we lose, we love again. We bring children into the world, we do our best to raise them right, we see them go off on their own and start their own lives. When we are young and innocent the world is our playground, but we are too inexperienced to truly enjoy it, to really dive in and taste each experience with as much gusto as we can.
Later in life after we have felt the burning emotions of a lover leaving us, the death of a loved one, or the sting of failure we can appreciate the world around us and all of its wonders. Four years ago, when what I thought what was the love of my life walked out on me without explanation, without cause, I thought my world had ended. It took me three years just to get my head above water again. Since that fateful day I have begun to embrace life for all that it is and can be. I have begun to travel—to see the world. I have returned to places that were in my past, places I never thought I would see again.
When I was a young man I joined the Army seeking the glory I had seen in John Wayne movies, I sought the action and adventure that my father and uncles told stories about when they served in the armed forces during World War II. So just two months after my high school graduation in 1985 I was inducted into the U.S. Army. After OSUT (One Station Unit Training) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I was a 12B10-Combat Engineer, and after a stop at Ft. Benning, Georgia, for Airborne School I was off to West Germany.
In 1986, when I was 19, Metallica came out with a song called “Disposable Heroes.” It was a pretty popular song in the barracks; at the time most of us did not realize it was an anti-war song. We were celebrating the fact that we were little more than cannon fodder and had no idea that is what we were. When I listen to that song today, one set of lyrics sticks out, running through my head as I visited Observation Post Alpha near Rasdorf, Germany.
More a man more stripes you wear, glory seeker trends
Bodies fill the fields I see, the slaughter never ends
Soldier boy, made of clay, now, an empty shell
Twenty one, only son but he served us well
Bred to kill, not to care, do just as we say
Finished here, greeting death, he's yours to take away
At the time, I didn’t realize that I was bred to kill, and not to care. That I was moldable clay, that the Army could mold into anything it wanted, and it did. I was a soldier, one who would have had a life expectancy of nine minutes had hostilities broken out between the United States and the Soviet Union.
When my son and I arrived at OP Alpha I was nervous. We had to enter from the eastern side of the border, near Geisa, a town I had only seen through binoculars during my two border tours. We had to cross the death zone to get to the American compound. In my head, I knew all the mines had been removed, that the pop-up machine guns were gone, that the East German and Soviet soldiers who used to man the outpost opposite of ours were gone, and that there were no dogs that would run me down and rip me to shreds.
But in my heart it was 30 years ago, and I was still in a divided nation, the minefields and all of the other defensive measures were still there to me. It took everything I had in me to step across the death zone. I thought sure when I did I would step on a mine and that would be it for me. My memories told me to expect to see a platoon of U.S. soldiers manning the OP, just as it was 30 years ago. Instead, I saw school children, not much younger than I was when I served at OP Alpha, on field trips and guided tours of a place I once called home, a place where in my time as a soldier you needed a top secret security clearance just to step foot on this desolate outpost.
Where PSG McCoy gave us our morning briefings was now meeting rooms and a conference center. Our rec center was now a cafeteria, and our basketball court was now a beer garden. My bunk and wall locker was a museum display behind glass. The vast majority of our living quarters was now display space for a Cold War museum. Some things were wrong—the armored personnel carrier for the react squad was in the wrong place. The room for the commanding officer was in the medic's room and not in the command building.
It took me longer to climb the stairs to the observation tower that it did 30 years ago. The East German tower that I faced so long ago is still there, as if the Cold War never ended. The experience did not seem real to me until I touched the East German tower.
On the way out, I told the woman selling tickets that I had been soldier stationed here 30 years ago, and that I appreciated them saving a part of my history. It was then that the emotions I’d been holding back all day hit me. Just 50 meters away from a cross erected in memory of a failed border crossing in front of our tower, I broke down and cried. Even as I write this a week after visiting OP Alpha I am still a little emotional about it, but I also, finally feel peace about my part in the Cold War.
There is no border there anymore, and no other young men will ever have to serve at an outpost that the vast majority of Americans never knew existed. When we left the observation post, I took my son on a trip to some of the checkpoints we had for our border patrols. The route we took was a lot simpler than the one I had to take 30 years ago. There was no border cutting off the most direct routes, so instead of a zig-zag route full of dead ends, we were able to drive to them directly. A route that used to take over fours to drive now took about 40 minutes.
The halfway house was now whole,no border cutting through it. The bridge to Vacha no longer had a wall going over it, there were no more iron bars going into the river below, lest anyone swim to freedom. I never expected to pull border duty when I joined the Army. I am one of a handful of men who served at OP Alpha from 1953 to 1991. It is an experience I will never forget, and as I look back on it, I am grateful to have had it. It was a time where I was a part of something bigger than myself, and not many people in this world have had experiences like that. It is one of those journeys in life that you do not expect to take. I also never expected to go back and visit this outpost some 30 years later, a journey that would not have happened had my life not taken an unexpected turn four years ago.