The Fall of the Berlin Wall
It was twenty years ago today that cracks first appeared in the Iron Curtain when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
I was in the navy at the time and saw it all on CNN (as well as on the intelligence wires). With the Wall falling and the Goddess of Democracy appearing in Tiananmen Square it was a wonderful time to be alive and a proud time to be in the military.
I found out a week ago that a friend of mine and her then husband were actually living in Berlin (her husband being in the military) then and decided to go out to Checkpoint Charlie after seeing Honnecker come on TV saying they were going to let people cross. Apparently they got there before anything started and recounted seeing this German punk with a mohawk take a rock and start pounding on the wall. Then this elderly German man came up to the guy with a mohawk, asked if he could borrow the guys rock and started pounding on the wall himself!
For myself, I was actually in school in Spain and completely missed all of it! It wasn’t until the next week that one of our teachers casually mentioned in class, “Oh, btw, the Berlin wall came down last week”!!!! All of us American students went looking for newspaper articles about it but by that time it was too late. 🙁