Two East German border guards atop the Berlin Wall look westward

Terry Irving
Senior Producer
CNN Washington Bureau

I was in Berlin for a week in 1989. Three days before ‘The Opening,’ three days during, and one day after. My memories are fragmented – not only by 20 years of time, but also by a near total lack of sleep during the week that marked the “end of history.”

I was working for ‘Nightline’ at ABC News at the time. After a busy period, the bosses decided to give me a “vacation” – two weeks covering the London bureau. Since nothing was really going on in the world, I decided to fly my wife and little girl over to see the Peter Pan statue and wander the little streets of London. As they were waiting for the taxi to the airport, I called and said I was being sent to Berlin. East Germans were streaming across to the West through other – less restrictive – countries in Eastern Europe and it looked like there was enough material for a good story. I think my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me.

While flying into Berlin, I looked down on Templehof Airport. The only other time I’d been to Berlin was to cover Ronald Reagan’s famous “pull down this Wall” speech. He’d flown in and out of Templehof which was a fantastic display of Nazi architecture – designed in the shape of an eagle with spread wings – and almost completely unused. It had been replaced by two newer airports and still had no jet ways – just canopies. You could almost see the ghost of the prop planes of the Berlin Airlift lining the empty tarmac. In the strange fashion of political and military locations, it was kept in perfect working order. I spoke to the manager and asked, “On an average day, how many flights come out of Templehof?” He thought for a minute and said, “Well, on an average day…none.”

I checked into one of the best hotels in Berlin and met up with my correspondent, the incredible Barrie Dunsmore. He was doing stories for both ‘World News Tonight’ and ‘Nightline,’ which meant I had to do the field reporting so that he could craft it into a story. I gathered up a camera crew and driver (all German) and a young interpreter. All the German citizens had to pass through one checkpoint into East Berlin and I would have to go through the American one – Checkpoint Charlie.

Checkpoint Charlie was a museum piece of the Cold War. Actually, there was a museum right outside that, for a fee, let tourists see all the attempts at escape, the spy tunnels and the growth of the Wall over the past 40 years. Entering was bizarre. Ice cold spotlights, endless lines with rude policeman who would stare at you and your passport for 15 or 20 minutes – just because they could. The cars were inspected outside – police would pound the seats and seat backs and roll mirrors underneath – all done with the aim of finding East Germans attempting to escape. In the museum, you could see why, a cut-away view of a man twisted and folded inside the tiny confines of a VW front seat.

East Berlin was dark. Few lights, few people on the streets, neon was a rarity that would catch your eye. The change from West to East was between a night ablaze with every product on sale anywhere and a night where there were only cobbled streets and screeching tram cars. We went to a church where there was a meeting of the opposition. I remember thinking that this group would never overturn anything – academics, soft-edged religious protesters. It was as if anyone who might have posed a real danger had been systematically culled.

Two days later, I was at a press conference in East Berlin. Actually, I was in a room the floor below, convincing the folks at ‘Nightline’ that there was no story that night. We’d spent a day lurking around East German hospitals to see if there was a shortage of doctors as the educated class fled to the West, but we had very little success. I came upstairs and watched the portly group of East German officials drone on at the front table (is it clear yet that I don’t speak German?). Suddenly, the interpreter shot upright, grabbed the video tapes and raced out of the room. He said, “The Wall is going down tonight. They just said it.”

The German video crew laughed. They said that it was the same stuff they’d heard again and again. There would be some changes so that more people could visit their grandmothers but the Wall was not going to open. Most of the reporters seemed to have the same attitude, laughing and relaxed. But a few teams were racing from the room – I went outside and watched as they squealed away. I asked the crew again and got the same answer. They said we should head back to West Berlin and call it a night.

I was just curious enough to want a bit more information. We drove to the Alexanderplatz – the enormous central train station and open area where there were demonstrations (on those rare occasions when there were demonstrations). We sat in the crew van and waited until the East German newscast at the top on the hour. The crew listened and I watched their faces. Finally, they said, well, yes the announcer said that the Wall would open tonight. They still didn’t believe it. But it was enough for me. We went inside the train station for the first reaction to this momentous news.

The first reaction was complete disbelief. Without an exception, I was the first person to tell anyone this news (through a mangled translation by the sound technician). People crowded around us but only to find out what we knew and then debate it. At one point, a small man in the back of our small crowd spoke up and said something sharply. There was a loud reply from a burly man in the front. My crew said that the small guy was clearly German Secret Police (or Stazi) and he had said we shouldn’t talk about such things in a public place. The response was, “Why, do you think people have different opinions outside?” But that was enough for decades of training to kick in with my crew and they wanted out. We went to the Alexanderplatz square, looking for a rally or milling or even three or four people talking.

Since that didn’t happen, we drove to the home of one of the leaders of the opposition. It was now quite late at night and he was irritated that I would dare to bother him – he seemed to have no idea about the reality of politics and the press. Finally he let me in and introduced me to the correspondent from Tass (the Soviet wire service). I began the interview and he, of course, scoffed at the idea that the Wall would open. He looked at the Tass correspondent who nodded glumly. Then he looked at the television that had been playing silently in the background. My interview fell apart as he got caught up in the news.

We headed back to West Berlin with the first tapes from Inside East Berlin. Of course, nothing had changed at the checkpoints so it was several hours before I got back to the bureau. By that time, crowds were lined up at the Wall and my material had long been made useless by the rush of events. Peter Jennings was on his way to report live.

Barrie and I did our ‘Nightline’ live shots at about 6 a.m. local time in front of the famous pictures of young people with pickaxes atop the Wall, champagne flowing and raucous cheers. After our report, I said to Barrie, “You know, we should go get some pieces of the Wall. If we don’t we’ll get sent somewhere else and never get back.” As we collected our chips of concrete on this historic moment, Barrie said, “You know, I’m standing here under a bunch of drunken Germans smashing concrete with sledgehammers. I don’t know when I’ve ever done anything so incredibly stupid.”

The next day was the big day when it seemed that everyone in East Germany got in their smoky little Trabants and came to Berlin. The crowds walked up and down the main streets, marveling at the lights, all the stuff in the store windows. They sang and celebrated. I never stopped working – I think I only slept in taxi cabs as we struggled through the endless jams. One of the problems was that we would finish a ‘Nightline’ feed at about 7am local time and need to begin to shoot a story for the next night.

I have one vivid memory of running through Checkpoint Charlie. Running. Waving my American passport and press credentials above my head. Smiling policemen, who had been so rude just days before, waved me through. The World had changed.

On Monday, it was over. Everyone – East and West Germans alike – went back to work. The shopping streets were empty. You could still cross the Wall but there were no lines. I finally went back to my hotel. They told me that my reservation had run out and they’d had to throw me out of my room. I stood there stunned. The World Had Changed. There had been a Revolution in the Streets. The desk clerk was completely unmoved – I hadn’t renewed my reservation and so I was out. Luckily there was another ABC staffer with an extra bed where I could get my first sleep in days.

There you are. My vision of history. I still have the chunk of the Wall. I mounted it on a piece of wood with a brass plaque that says

“The Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989.
They came.
They saw.
They did a little shopping.”