e were produced for use on the East German-West German border.) A few feet inside the Zone of Peace stood a ten-foot-high fence of barbed wire strung thickly on concrete posts. Six feet behind this fence was a similar one, and six feet behind the second was a third. Directly behind the third fence was a ditch about eight feet wide and three feet deep. Behind the ditch was a strip of land, about thirty yards wide, that had been cleared of trees and brush—the death strip. To the north and south, this formidable band of fortifications stretched as far as one could see, across fields that had once been used for farming and truck gardening. Nothing was growing on them now, nor was there any sign of life. “This border looks much the same over its entire length,” the colonel said. “They’ve mined the death strip in a great many places—we know, because we’ve watched them do it—and they’ve also put up watchtowers about every three thousand feet. Between the towers they’re building bunkers out of earth and logs. There are plenty of searchlights, and plenty of Vopos on patrol. Last December, about half a mile from here, they killed a young student who was trying to help a refugee escape. Three months after that, also not far from here, a thirteen-year-old boy cut the barbed-wire fences in the family meadow, and he and his parents and his sister got out safely. It’s a strong border, but it’s not perfect. There are still places where a person could get through if he studied the situation diligently enough.”
It was a pleasant morning, and the colonel suggested that we walk down a cobblestone road that leads off to the right, parallel to the border. The Vopo continued to watch us through his binoculars as we set off. When we had gone the equivalent of a couple of city blocks, a pair of patrolling Vopos (they never go on border duty singly) came into view behind the barbed-wire fence nearest the road. Each had a submachine gun, or machine pistol, as the Germans call it, slung over his shoulder. When we were nearly abreast of them, they stopped. One checked his wristwatch and wrote something in a notebook; the other raised his binoculars. The colonel and I also stopped. Like most Vopos, these two were young—probably nineteen or twenty—and neither cut a very smart figure. Their uniforms seemed a size too big, they were loaded down with gear, which included steel helmets hanging from their belts (they were wearing forage caps), and they presented a lumpy aspect, as if all their pockets were overstuffed. “They don’t look too sharp,” the colonel said, “but everything they’ve got is the best Ulbricht can give them—the best cloth, best leather, best of everything all the way down the line, including food. Those submachine guns were manufactured in Czechoslovakia. They’re first quality, too.” I decided to get a picture of the Vopos, and took a Minox camera from my pocket. The minute I raised the view finder to my eye, both turned their backs. A few feet away was a fruit tree with low branches (one of the very few trees that I saw left standing anywhere near the East German border); the Vopos camouflaged themselves behind the foliage, and as one again raised his binoculars, the other slid his submachine gun from his shoulder. “They’ll stand there as long as we stand here,” the colonel said. “They think it’s some kind of a game. We might as well go on.”
About a quarter of a mile farther down the road, we came to a wooden shack the size of three telephone booths put together, which provides shelter for the two West Berlin policemen on border duty in the area. They were sitting nearby on the grass, listening to a transistor radio; M-2 carbines, manufactured in the United States, lay across their knees. Opposite the police shelter, another garishly painted metal sign could be seen through the barbed-wire fence. This one showed Death in the uniform of a Nazi S.S. officer, standing amid a sea of skulls and skeletons labelled “Stalingrad.” To the right of this figure was a drawing that supposedly represented a West Berlin policeman. The message on the s