Word: checkpoint
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...What shall I do? Order you to shoot?" As a crowd of 20,000 of his countrymen implored him to "Open the gate!" on that chaotic Thursday evening, Harald Jager, head of passport control at the Berlin Wall's Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint, kept shouting that rhetorical question at the guards under his command. It was nearly 11 p.m., four hours since Jager heard the stunning news on TV: the East German Politburo, responding to weeks of peaceful demonstrations and a flood of refugees fleeing through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, had announced that all citizens could leave East Germany at any crossing...
...halfway out of the track's back door yells at his master gunner, Sergeant Robert Jones, "You need to call HQ right now and tell them we have 10 men, 200 meters to the north, with AKs and RPGs." Jones jumps on the radio. "Break, break, this is Checkpoint Zero, Zero, Two, Two. We have possible contact with enemy soldiers. We are checking it out and moving into position now." The reply is instant. "Zero, Zero, Two, Two, this is Battle Five. If you have positive IDs, do not wait for them to fire. Destroy them...
...Nothing. Carnahan then gets a call from Brigade. "We have a new mission," he announces to his men. "We're pulling out and moving back east to another checkpoint." Pause. "Dammit. Pull back again...
...also an unsparing observer of the regime's victims, particularly the foreigners who sought refuge at the embassy. When a group of them are finally given safe passage to Thailand, one American journalist fills his only bag with silver plate stolen from the embassy dining room. At the final checkpoint, within sight of freedom, a French radio announcer, hysterical with fear, renounces his Khmer bride and allows her and her child to be dragged away...
...assault peshmerga positions along the line of control were swamped by an artillery barrage as infantry maneuvers played out on the Iraqi side. "It kept our heads down while they practiced and tried to gauge how many were in their target villages," says a security official at the crossing checkpoint. On the day of the attack they claim artillery fire hit other positions further inside Kurdistan that could have offered support to the villages under threat...