Father's Day

Dad passes on. Dad passed away on October 30, 1983 while I was in Texas. My sister, Eula, had called me to say that he was sick and in the hospital. I flew to Idaho Falls immediately. The doctor had diagnosed lung cancer that was terminal. He mentioned the possibility of chemotherapy, but noted it would only slow up the inevitable and cause Dad a great deal of discomfort. I voted no. I checked Dad out of the hospital and drove him home. He worried about how Mother would get along without him; he had been helping her dress and do the housework for years. Since he had never smoked a cigarette in his life, he did not understand why he, a farmer who worked outside all his life and never had anything to do with asbestos, should get cancer of the lungs. Knowing his illness was terminal, he took it all rather calmly and did nothing to fight the inevitable. He died within a month after learning he had cancer. I spoke at his funeral.

During this period, I accidentally heard my brother, Wayne, speak to Dad about the hereafter. Wayne had gone into Dad to ask him to find Wayne's son, Mark, and also his infant daughter, Sandra, as soon as Dad got on the other side. It was perhaps the most poignant witness of the testimony of the gospel I have ever witnessed. It shook me to the core of my being.

I cannot speak enough of my father. I loved him, as I believe all of us did, with an incredible fervor. I have no special explanation for the feelings I have always had for Dad. Perhaps I knew he loved me. He was neither rich nor famous. He was just my Dad. I think of him every day. The following obituary was printed in the Post Register on October 31, 1983:

LeRoy Maurice Hansen, 81, a farmer, died at his home Oct. 30 of cancer. He was born Sept. 23, 1902, in Smithfield, Utah, the son of Erastus and Annie Marie Gamet Hansen. He lived at Smithfield and then moved to the Lincoln area where he has lived since. He attended schools at Lincoln. He married Amy LaVon Buttars June 18, 1924, in the Logan, Utah, LDS Temple. He has farmed all of his life.

He has been an active member of the LDS Church.  He is survived by his wife; three sons, Maurice V. Hansen, Grand Junction, Colorado, and Vienna, Austria, Wayne Lynn. Hansen, Washington, D.C.; one daughter, Mrs. Larry Baldwin Eula, Idaho Falls; 17 grandchildren; 20 great-grandchildren; five sisters, Loveda Peterson, Lydia Perry, Hilda Burnham and Leona Johnson, all of Idaho Falls and Hortense Andrus of Ucon and one brother, Leland Hansen, Iona.

Funeral services will be Thursday at 1 p.m. at the Lincoln Third LDS Ward Chapel. Bishop Larry Acor will officiate. The family will meet with friends Wednesday from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Wood Funeral Home and Thursday, one hour prior to services, at the church.  Burial will be in Fielding Memorial Park.

I was distraught at Dad’s passing. While putting on a good face, I wept inwardly for a very long time. During this period, I wrote an amateurish poem that helped capture my feelings.

When I was a boy I looked up at my Dad.

One might think now I'd be a little sad,

For now it seems I look down at him.

He has grown smaller and somewhat thin.

But when I was small,

He was the biggest Dad of all.

And oft I looked up to see

If maybe he was looking down at me.

As time passed and I grew,

There was nothing my Dad couldn't do.

Why in baseball, a curve he could throw

And on the trumpet, a mean tune he'd blow.

But insignificant were such things,

Beside the wisdom and love his image brings

To me still. For now I have a father's joys

And know the questioning eyes of girls and boys.

When I was a boy I looked up at Dad.

I'm not sorry, nor remorseful, nor sad.

For even though I now look down at him,

I will throughout all eternity look up to him.

Berlin Part III: "Clobbered," Disciplined, and Decorated - All in a Days Work

Schwerin. For reasons that I have never quite understood I, a lowly Second Lieutenant, was often sent to the Headquarters of the United States Air Force in Europe – at that time located at Lindsay Air Station in Wiesbaden. During several of these visits, the liaison officer from Strategic Air Command (SAC) voiced the urgent requirement to get a photograph of the guidance radar for the SA-2 surface-to-air missile system. It seemed that the Soviets had changed the radar guidance signal from the S-band to the C-band and it was causing SAC significant concern. The only problem was that all SA-2 sites were in permanently restricted areas. I decided that if the Air Force wanted such a photograph, I would get it for them.

SA-2 "Guideline" Surface to Air Missile System

Without a great deal of detailed planning, but imbued with the determination to get what the Air Force Strategic Air Command wanted, Sergeant Ratz and I left Berlin late one afternoon on our way to visit the Soviet missile site at Schwerin in East Germany. During the darkness of night, we spent several hours near the Soviet Air Force base at Rechlin-Lärz/Mirow tearing down every mission restriction sign we could find. Many of these signs had cement posts and were very heavy. We couldn’t just take them down, we had to carry them some distance away, throw them in the river, or take other steps to ensure that it would not be easy to put them up again. In all, we got rid of about fifty such signs and were exhausted when finished. We then drove on to the periphery of the permanently restricted area in which Schwerin was located. There, we grabbed a couple of hours of sleep.

Just before dawn, we awoke and drove to the perimeter of the missile site at Schwerin. As soon as there was sufficient light, I crawled onto the roof of the car and with my Leica camera, equipped with a 640-millimeter lens, took an entire roll of film of the missile guidance radar. At the time, the NATO code name for the radar was "fruitset"; it was later changed to "fansong."

We escaped from the missile site without incident. However, somewhere along the way, we broke our automobile. We had no choice, but to return to Berlin to get another car. While we were there, I gave the roll of film to the photo lab with the instructions to develop it, but not to print anything. We then took another car and returned to the area from which we had come.

First Clobber. It was our intention to take advantage of the fact that we had torn down the mission restriction signs at Rechlin-Lärz airfield near Mirow. As we approached the airfield, we saw a Soviet staff car. We turned around, beat a hasty retreat and hid for about an hour and then returned. However, the Soviets had laid a trap for us. We were captured, held at gunpoint, and threatened with various abuses. In our vernacular, we were clobbered. We knew, however, that only the Soviet area commandant was empowered to deal with us. When he finally arrived, we noted, with some trepidation, that it was the notorious commandant from the town of Neustrelitz, who had the reputation of being extremely security conscious and a great enemy of the military missions. As soon as he arrived, he stormed out of his car and proceeded to heap verbal abuse on me for violating his mission restriction signs. I responded that there were no mission restriction signs. (I knew there weren't because we had torn them all down the previous evening.) He kept insisting that I sign a confession, which I, of course, refused to do. Finally, he showed me his private map on which the location of all the mission restriction signs was carefully marked. I finally said that I would sign his dumb confession if he could show me a single sign that I had violated. So we formed a convoy with my car in the middle, preceded by the area commandant in his vehicle, followed by two Soviet vehicles from the air base and went looking for signs. There weren't any. We stopped in the village of Mirow, where he admitted that there were no signs; however, he explained, British mission car number forty-five had been seen removing the signs. The British subsequently received a diplomatic note protesting this action that we had perpetrated.

Air Force Commendation Medal. The reader will remember that I had turned in some film to the photography laboratory with the instruction to develop it without printing it. Well, in the press of his daily activities, he both developed and printed the pictures I had taken of the Schwerin missile guidance radar, and they were lying on my desk when we returned after two days on the road. Also awaiting me was the order to report to the Chief of the Mission, as soon as I returned. I did. He demanded, "Where did you get those photos of the Fruitset?" "At Schwerin, Sir,” I replied. He dismissed me curtly and called for Lieutenant Colonel Gordon. For disobeying mission policies, I was to receive an Article 15 – a non-judicial form of legal punishment meted out by the military. Colonel Gordon called the Air Force Commander at United States Air Forces in Europe, General Truman Landon, explained what had happened and asked for cover. General Landon then wrote a letter of commendation to the United States Army Europe commander, who endorsed it down to the Chief of USMLM, who had no choice but to endorse it down to the Air Team and finally to me. The Article 15 was forgotten. Instead, I was decorated with the Air Force Commendation Medal on December 13, 1962 in a ceremony conducted by the Commander of the 7000th Support Wing at Rhein Main Air Base.

Receiving the Air Force Commendation Medal

Berlin Part II - Spying on the Soviets as a Second Lieutenant

First Military Assignment. I was initially assigned as the Air Force Operations Officer in a joint refugee interrogation and processing center. At the time, it was called Joint Overt Interrogation Center, Berlin. Later, it was called Joint Refugee Operations Center. People exiting East Germany were processed through a system, which allowed allied intelligence to question them. The Army, Navy, and CIA were all represented in the center, and I thus gained an early introduction to inter-service rivalries and squabbles.

USMLM. Hardly three months after beginning this assignment, I attended a party at my boss's home. A strange little fellow, Major Matt Warren, was present and dominated the conversation with tales of his experiences in East Germany. Most of what he said sounded so impossible that I ignored the man. In fact, under my breath I repeatedly said, “That is bullshit.” However, a few days later I received a telephone call from this same major, requesting me to meet him in the officer's club that evening after work. I was a second lieutenant; he was a major. I complied with his request. As I entered the club, he confronted me with belligerent questions voiced in the Russian language. "What are you doing here," he demanded. I replied using the Russian double negative, I said that I was not doing nothing. The answer seemed to please him. Immediately, he told me that I was going to work for him in the United States Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) to the Commander of Soviet Forces in Germany. He noted that my new assignment had already been cleared with the headquarters in Frankfurt. I was completely shocked but also pleased.

The commander of my regular unit was not pleased. If I recall correctly, I was the only company grade officer in his outfit; he was angry and got my orders canceled. Nonetheless, I was sent to USMLM on temporary duty, which kept getting extended. Eventually, I received permanent change of duty orders.

When I reported in to the chief of the mission, an army full colonel named Ernst von Pawel, it came as a complete shock to him. I was left standing outside his office as the executive officer went in to inform him that I was there. The next sounds I heard from the office were: "a *&%$#@#* Second Lieutenant!" His outburst left me shaken. For a moment I remembered my mother’s oft-voiced sentiment that the only people who stayed in the military were lower class. But he had a point; I was untrained and a complete neophyte. Comparable army officers had been trained for four years for this assignment and all were at least captains.

The mission’s offices were located on Föhrenweg in West Berlin. This building was once the secret headquarters of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, wartime Chief of Staff of Hitler’s military supreme command.  The lower two floors were bomb proof with steel reinforced concrete floors two or three feet thick and walls of similar material. The ground floor contained mess facilities and there was an L shaped underground escape tunnel with special air funnels. But officially, our headquarters were in the Potsdam House located on a 4.5 acre estate located on the Lehnitzsee in the village of Neufahrland, near Potsdam. The estate was built in 1903 by a Prussian Army officer of the von Duehringshofen family, which was ennobled in 1649 for military feats during the Thirty Years War. The family coat of arms can still be seen on the side of the main building. In 1947, with the signing of the Huebner-Malinin agreement, which established the USMLM and the Soviet Mission in Frankfurt, the estate became US property. Article 13 of the agreement guarantees the  Mission House “...full rights of extraterritoriality.” The USMLM Mission House was the only official American presence in East Germany until 1974, when diplomatic relations were established between the two countries. Potsdam House

From late 1961 to approximately April of 1963, I traveled two, three, and even four days a week in what was at that time called the Soviet Zone of Germany. The little major who had hired me, seemed determined that there should be a huge gap in the performance of the unit after he departed and therefore fired every officer on the team, except me, prior to his departure. Thus as a second lieutenant, I effectively ran the operation with the assistance of a couple of non-commissioned officers until a new chief of the air team was assigned.

With some vividness, I recall the first trip I took into East Germany. My heart pounded as we crossed the Glienicke Brücke from West Berlin, through the Russian checkpoint, and into Potsdam. Adrenalin surged through my body and provided me with an exhilaration I was to experience many times in the future. After an hour or so drive, we were at Wittstock Airfield. The Ground Control Intercept (GCI) radar on the field was rotating, and Soviet MiG-19 aircraft were taking off and landing. At the time, I thought this was the most exciting thing I had ever done. However, much more excitement lay ahead.

USMLM Credentials

Each trip was an adventure full of thrills, daring, and often complete fool heartiness. During 1962, I was captured and detained by the Russians six times for alleged violations of one sort or the other. My driver was Sergeant Melvin E. Ratz. He and I were approximately the same age and shared similar dispositions. The Russians were enemies, and we were going to cause them all the difficulty we could. Our boss was Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Gordon, one of the finest men I have ever known. He, however, had suffered a heart attack and needed to be careful; thus he did not spend as much time in East Germany. It was simply too exciting and dangerous for a weak heart. That left Mel and me the responsibility of wreaking as much havoc as possible in the East. My experience and my training had taught me that the Soviets were my enemy. I believed they were and was consumed by the desire to inflict as much damage as I could upon them by learning their secrets.

Mission Restriction Signs

The civilian economy was in wreckage. Fresh fruits were unheard of, so we would carry a supply of bananas and oranges with us to the countryside as if to emphasize the inability of communism to look after its citizens. Children from many walks of life would gather about as we passed out American made bubble gum. Each trip we exhausted a supply of American cigarettes by handing them to people we met in the East. This, too, was waging the Cold War.

USMLM Patch

 Every Soviet and East German military installation was ringed with mission restriction signs in four languages, which forbade members of the three military missions from getting closer. All the more sensitive military facilities were located in permanent restricted areas where we were forever forbidden to go. Official policy decreed that we would not violate these signs nor enter into the permanently restricted areas. Unofficially, however, it was understood that we had to violate these restrictions in order to collect quality intelligence. Lt. Col. Gordon understood this and thus gave us the green light to do what was necessary to get the job done.

Berlin Part I

Free University of Berlin. On September 8, 1960, I entered the United States Air Force. My initial assignment was with the Air Force Institute of Technology with my duty station at the Free University of Berlin in West Berlin, Germany as a Fulbright Fellow. I processed in at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio and one day later was sworn in as a regular Air Force officer.

I left Faith and the baby in Utah and proceeded to Germany. As soon as it was feasible, I sent for them. Prior to their arrival, I lived with Dr. and Mrs. Gerhardt Lütgert as part of the Fulbright exchange program and gained a number of insights into German domestic life. I grew fond of the Lütgerts and appreciated the opportunity they afforded me to live with a German family. When Faith and the baby arrived we lived for a short time in a rather dreadful apartment on Hüttenweg; later we moved to a more acceptable place on Thielallee.

At the university, I was left to study and pursue my interests pretty much as I pleased. The major portion of my time was spent studying German and German literature, but I also took classes in the Yugoslavian language (Serbo-Croatian), Danish literature, Swedish, and old Nordic. I even took a few classes in French at the Maison de France on Kurfürstendam. I was supposed to study Russian, but found that translating from Russian into German, in a very large class, exceeded both my linguistic ability and my self-confidence.

At the end of the academic year, it had been my intention to return to the United States to attend flight training. I had wanted to be a pilot, although my enthusiasm had been dramatically dampened by my experience with spins in the Aeronica Champ. In Berlin, I had made contacts with the Air Force community, especially those from intelligence. Thus, I was offered the opportunity to remain in Berlin as an intelligence officer with the 7000th Support Wing, whose headquarters were at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt. I elected to remain in Berlin, since they would then refund my expenses for bringing Faith and Kurt from Utah, and we were quite comfortable in Berlin. Before assuming my new job, I took leave and traveled to Austria, Yugoslavia, and Northern Italy.

Berlin was an extremely interesting place in the early 1960s. Among other things, it was a nest of spies. The city was full of intelligence operatives from almost every country, and thus one could be confident that at least half of one's acquaintances were involved in some facet of intelligence work, if not pure espionage. On May Day 1961, while still a student, I went to East Berlin, stood in the crowd, and took pictures of the East German Army parade with all its military equipment. I later learned that the U.S. intelligence community had not dared to send its own people to do the same on an official basis. East Berlin still bore many of the scars of the bombing it had received during World War II and was generally dismal and depressing. Tens of thousands of people were voting with their feet each month to resettle in West Berlin and West Germany. We even had a cleaning lady who came once a week from East Berlin to earn a few West German marks.

At that time, one could pass freely through the Brandenburg Gate to and from West Berlin. Many East Germans crossed over to West Berlin to seek employment. There was an atmosphere of pseudo-tranquility among the people while Western politicians stewed and fretted over Soviet intentions. But people were also leaving East Germany in droves. Many who left were highly educated professionals, thus one could speak of a brain drain.

The Berlin Wall. On August 13, 1961, those of us living in the divided city of Berlin arose from our beds to the news that East Berlin was being sealed off from West Berlin. Few people really understood what had happened, and some even scoffed at the idea that barbed wire or even a wall could keep people apart. Curiosity drove me to visit the border near the Brandenburg Gate that very evening. A large group of West Berliners had gathered on the western side and were shouting obscenities at those involved in enforcing the separation. Elements of the East German Kampfgruppen,  a paramilitary organization designed to manifest the absolute rule of the proletariat in East Germany joined police and border security guards to create a ubiquitous security presence where workers erected the wall. They had a huge water cannon that was aimed at those on the Western side who got close enough to make threats against this new division of their city. It was not long before the East Germans began replacing concertina wire with a wall constructed of large cement blocks and mortar. Soon, a feat, which would have seemed impossible, had it simply been proposed, became a reality as the infamous Berlin Wall was built. As the wall supplanted the barbed wire, it quickly became the symbol of a failed system, of a regime unable to fulfill the needs of its citizens. It was clear from that moment that a society, which had to keep its people hostage, was doomed to fail. The Wall became, I think, the visible incarnation of the Cold War. The amount of resources it took to build the wall was staggering, but it soon turned out to be the best investment East Berlin could make as it kept its people inside, and forced them to make their peace, at least temporarily, with communism.

During this time, the Western Allies in Berlin were on various stages of alert. For a time, U.S. tanks faced Soviet tanks across Friedrichstraße with only a 100-yard separation. Our neighbor upstairs in the same stairwell was commander of a company of 40th armor in Berlin, and we thus gained special insights into his situation during the faceoff.  We also visited the site of the faceoff. Somehow, no shots were ever fired, and each army finally withdrew its tanks – first to a bivouac area, and then back to their garrisons.

I was a brand new Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, assigned first to study German at the Free University of Berlin and subsequently as an intelligence officer. My family was told to pack bags containing only emergency supplies in the event that they should have to be evacuated. Supplies of military K-rations were made available.

These were tense times. No one knew whether, by an act of will or by accident, the tanks might fire on each other. We were not privy to discussions in the Washington bureaucracy or to the deliberations of the Politburo. For us, we only had to do our duty and participate in the defense of West Berlin should the other side make an offensive move. But each side held its ground, until little by little the opposing tanks withdrew to positions where they were no longer staring down each other's gun barrels.

In my eight years in the divided city, East Berlin never stopped working on the wall, undertaking the impossible task of making it aesthetically more pleasing, as well as re-enforcing its principle purpose. Life, albeit somewhat strained, went on pretty much as normal. Espionage organizations from many, many countries now faced the difficult task of re-establishing contact with their agents on the other side of the Wall. Every scrap of information was scrutinized, analyzed, and fused with that from other sources. Information on intentions and capabilities were of paramount importance.

The Berlin airlift some years earlier had demonstrated the political will of the West to protect the citizens of West Berlin from a communist takeover. U.S. re-enforcements were sent to Berlin, crossing from Helmstedt via the autobahn to the crossing point at Berlin-Babelsberg. There was concern that conflict could arise from that act, but the crossing was made without incident. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was there when they arrived. President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin and on the balcony of the Schöneberger Rathaus said with a clear and steady voice, Ich bin ein Berliner. In that moment West Berliners and their occupying forces (for they were actual occupiers) became as one. Every American became ein Berliner. There was no war, no major hostilities involving armed units, only the slow business of getting on with life in the divided city, now defined by its hideous shrine to a failed system. For 28 years, the Wall stood until the hope of a better life emboldened young people to speak out en masse.