Unified.....? (Part 1)

This weekend the Germans will be celebrating the German reunification of East and West Germany.
 When I had my dealings with it, that's the way it was!
We (my deceased wife and I) lived and worked in Western Germany and West Berlin for over 25 years, personally firstly as a British Soldier then later in life as a Civilian, my wife as an SRN (Nurse) in a German hospital.
That Germany was different to UK was clear - it still is - it's cleaner, neater,tidier people were nicer more affluent although they had suffered greatly in the 30's to the 50's.
I'm talking here about the 1960's and we were still an 'occupying force'.......
Of course in between, since 1945, we had installed ourselves well, golf courses - cricket matches - Supermarkets with bacon and sausage and Heinz beans...!
Some of us had even made many friends in the local German population and we were looked at with suspicion by our colleagues.
For my part, it had all started when, as a 18 year old, I arrived at my first posting to the Regiment, the Royal Dragoons 1st Dragoons (Now the Blues & Royals) a heavy armoured Regiment of Tanks. Originally a cavalry Regiment the bands were particularly popular.
   When we arrived in Germany, we got on our bus taking us to Detmold, the German town we would be stationed in, and to my surprise, all the soldiers started laughing.......
It was then I realised there was something deeper to this country for I could not imagine these good and intelligent people putting up signs on the roads telling people when to 'Fahrt' (both in and out)!and even smiling about it.....I realised I would have to learn GERMAN! This was only one of the 'smilers' in the German language, those compound words with over 100 letters, or the American President Kennedy saying, in Berlin, that he was a 'Berliner' - shame nobody told him that the word was also slang for 'a doughnut'.......as somebody else said 'good job he wasn't in Paris', for in German a 'Pariser' is slang for a condome......!
Anyway, the days went bye in the sleepy little town of Detmoldnot known for anything in particular but very picturesque. After a couple of years my German was coming on leaps and bounds......I had spent 2 winter periods on an exercise called 'Snowqueen' designed to teach Soldiers to ski, for free, but of course they needed someone to translate from the Civilian German ski instructor......yours truly volunteered. They say never volunteer for anything in the Army - I found out differently!
Then I was put into a Squadron that was being posted for 3 months to West Berlin.
Our jobs were simple, night and day landrover control tours of the Berlin Wall, guarding a man called Rudolph Hess, the vice Fuhrer to Adolf Hitler who was imprisoned in the Spandau prison. We were stationed in Smuts Barracks, Spandau, which was attached to the Prison.
It's now a NAAFI Supermarket I understand - history destroyed!
Here in West Berlin we could play cricket, football, golf and we had an astounding range of passtimes. Of course, we were the first ones on the line if the Russians ever marched in!
All in all a thoroughly good time was had by all except the East German citizens who had nothing!
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB294/essay.htm

In the next episode to this story you can read about Snowqueen - Larzac in France, and in the 3rd part read all about my life as a German citizen (!) up to retirement in Southern France........
or read - right now - this account of somebodies' holiday in the place I live......

http://patrick.rudaz.free.fr/vacances/vac2007vauvert.htm