Word: vopos
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...side streets leading back from the Wall into East Berlin, the only humans in sight are the Vopo guards, dirty uniforms open at the neck, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Now and then an armored car full of East German officers races up for a snap inspection, obviously fearful that other Vopos will follow the 300 Communist cops who themselves have jumped the Wall to the West...
...occasional incident of violence, there is little actual tension along most of the barrier; kids fly kites near by, housewives shout contemptuous gibes at Vopos on the other side; the Vopos shrug, reply with an obscene gesture or just silence. I saw the Communist cops watching curiously as an old man approached the Wall from the western side at Heidelberger-strasse. His yellow arm band showed he was blind. Shuffling up to the wire, he reached out to feel the enormity of the barrier for himself. A young West Berlin woman standing near by curled her lip and cried...
East and West have begun to live with the monstrosity of the wall. Berliners on both sides are permitted in spots to approach the wall to chat, even exchange foodstuffs and newspapers, if the Vopo guard feels indulgent. But anger remains. Sunny weekend weather brought a crowd of West Berlin youths to the border at Markgrafenstrasse. Some began throwing small paving stones at a Vopo water-cannon truck. The Vopos retaliated by firing a battering stream of water at the assailants-until a U.S. tank rumbled to the wall. The Vopo cannon's squirt quickly subsided into an embarrassed...
Tense Half-Hour. Then, three busloads of sightseeing U.S. troops were sent across the Friedrichstrasse entry point in a deliberate showdown. Bluntly, a Vopo at the barrier demanded to see the drivers' identity cards. But the convoy's captain just as bluntly refused. The rules required, he said, that documents be shown only to Russians. "These buses are going through in 30 minutes," declared U.S. Provost Marshal Colonel Robert Sabolyk. "If they are held up, we know what to do about it." When the half-hour was up, no Russian was in sight. Grimly, the bus drivers started...
...being barricaded, other squads raced to lock the gates of the S-bahn (elevated) and of the ten major U-bahn (subway) stations that serviced trains traveling into West Berlin. Guards were posted in the pitch-dark U-bahn tunnels to halt the more imaginative sneakers. After a helmeted Vopo guard at the new barrier leaped across the barbed wire and escaped to the West, East German officers began keeping their enlisted men several yards from the wire to prevent more defections. Toughest task of all was sealing the frontier where the line slices down the center of residential streets...