For Vern Pike, a young lieutenant stationed at Checkpoint Charlie in the American sector of West Berlin, the month of August 1961 should have been all about golf. In the end, however, the only thing that really teed off was the construction of the Berlin Wall.
In a development reminiscent of the activities of the fictional fun-loving army surgeons in the long-running TV show M*A*S*H, the 24-year-old Pike had been detailed by his superior officer, a keen golfer, to oversee the restoration of a derelict course so the colonel could enjoy a few rounds.
A platoon leader in the US Army Berlin Brigade's 287th Military Police Company, Pike had even lined up some caddies, and it was only when they stopped showing up that he understood that the Cold War was really starting to heat up.
"All of my caddies were from East Germany and they would crawl through a hole in the wire," recalls Pike, one of the speakers at the BOLDtalks series of lectures at Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre tomorrow. Then, "a couple of days before the wall went up, they told us 'We may not be able to get over here much longer'."
Pike was about to find himself playing a walk-on part in the drama of unfolding history.
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