 and more about leaving.” From time to time, he withdrew money from his savings account and bought cameras and binoculars, which he planned to sell once he had reached the West, in order to get established there. In October, 1961, his unit was transferred to the border near a suburb of East Berlin, where, on a day off, he met two young friends of his, who said they were having a hard time getting jobs in East Germany, because they had worked in West Berlin before August 13th. They indicated that they planned to go back. Rudi saw the two friends several more times, on his days off, and the three presently began working out plans for a joint escape. After devising three schemes that had to he discarded because of changing conditions on the border, the group, which had been enlarged to include the fiancée of one of the friends, settled on a plan that they considered feasible.
According to this plan, the escape attempt would start at exactly 8 P.M. At that hour, Rudi’s friends were to drive up to the border-patrol office in an automobile. The girl, wearing a man’s hat and coast, was to be sitting in the back seat with her fiancé. The other man, at the wheel, was to ask for Unteroffizier Hermann, who would be on office duty that night. Rudi was to get in next to the driver, and the car would then proceed swiftly to the control post at the first barrier, a barbed-wire fence. Rudi was to announce to the sentries there in a loud voice that the other occupants of the car were from the S.S.D. (a term that, he told me, inspires about the same reaction that “Gestapo” did in the past) and that he had to accompany them to the border. “I thought this would work,” Rudi explained, “because one of the soldiers on duty that night would be brand-new, and wouldn’t know what my authority was, and the other fellow was lazy and stupid.” Rudi and his friends planned to be armed, and they had reason for not expecting trouble at the second barrier, which was also a barbed-wire fence. “If something went wrong there,” Rudi said, “we weren’t figuring on the guards’ firing at us or raising an alarm with shooting. Before issuing machine pistols to those two guards that night, I planned to remove a small but necessary part of the firing mechanism. They normally wouldn’t notice this until after they had returned to the barracks and were taking their guns apart to clean them before turning them in.” With the sentries neutralized, Rudi and his companions planned to use wire snippers to cut through the fence. They had decided that each could take a few possessions in a small bag. Rudi filled his bag with his capital in the form of cameras and binoculars.
On the night set for the escape, Rudi was in the office, seemingly absorbed in studying a report, when, at five minutes before eight, an urgent call came from one of the sentries at the second barrier, who asked to be put through immediately to the area commander. “The call went through, and I listened in,” Rudi said. “The soldier reported that their guns—his and the other sentry’s—had been tampered with and would not fire. The soldiers aren’t supposed to clean their guns until after they have come off duty and are back in the barracks, but sometimes, to save time, they do this during the last hour or so before they’re relieved. The commander said to ring the alarm bell and seal the border. Here was trouble. Fortunately, no one suspected me. I was the leader of a unit, and had always set a good example.” Punctually at eight o’clock, Rudi’s companions stopped their car at the door of the border-patrol office. Rudi was there to meet them. “Are you Unteroffizier Hermann? We are from the S.S.D.,” the driver confidently announced. Rudi whispered that the plan had fouled. “I told him to turn around and drive to a place about four kilometres down the border and wait for me until about nine o’clock,” Rudi recalled. “As soon as I could, I got my gun and ran to my friends. I told them what had happened. We couldn’t waste a minute. I said to leave the car and everything, and follow me. I got ten metres ahead of them. 