smashed to powdered rubble by a juggernaut. The evidence
would be there for all time, written in the architecture. And
under the architecture. Every time the phone company dug a
trench for a cable, they found skulls and bones and tea cups
and shells and rusted-out panzerfausts. Every time ground was
broken for a new foundation, a priest was standing by before
the steam shovels took their first bite. I was born in Berlin,
surrounded by Americans, surrounded by whole square miles
of patched-up devastation. They started it, we used to say.
The suburban streets were neat and clean. There were
discreet stores with apartments above them. The store windows
were full of shiny items. Street signs were black-on-white,
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written in an archaic script that made them hard to read. There
were small U.S. Army road signs here and there, too. You
couldn’t go very far without seeing one. We followed the XII
Corps arrows, getting closer all the time. We left the built-up
area and drove through a couple of kilometres of farmland. It
felt like a moat. Like insulation. The eastern sky ahead of us
was dark.
XII Corps was based in a typical glory-days installation. Some
Nazi industrialist had built a thousand-acre factory site out in
the fields, back in the 1930s. It had featured an impressive
home office building and ranks of low metal sheds stretching
hundreds of metres behind it. The sheds had been bombed to
twisted shards, over and over again. The home office building
had been only partially damaged. Some weary U.S. Army
armoured division had set up camp in it in 1945. Thin Frankfurt
women in headscarves and faded print dresses had been
brought in to pile the rubble, in exchange for food. They
worked with wheelbarrows and shovels. Then the Army Corps
of Engineers had fixed up the office building and bulldozed
the piles of rubble away. Successive huge waves of Pentagon
spending had rolled in. By 1953 the place was a flagship
installation. There was cleaned brick and shining white paint
and a strong perimeter fence. There were flagpoles and sentry
boxes and guard shacks. There were mess halls and a medical
clinic and a PX. There were barracks and workshops and warehouses.
Above all there was a thousand acres of flat land and by
1953 it was covered with American tanks. They were all lined
up, facing east, ready to roll out and fight for the Fulda Gap.
When we got there thirty-seven years later it was too dark to
see much. But I knew that nothing fundamental would have
changed. The tanks would be different, but that would be all.
The M4 Shermans that had won World War 2 were long gone,
except for two fine examples standing preserved outside the
main gate, one on each side, like symbols. They were placed
halfway up landscaped concrete ramps, noses high, tails low,
like they were still in motion, breasting a rise. They were lit up
theatrically. They were beautifully painted, glossy green, with
bright white stars on their sides. They looked much better than
they had originally. Behind them was a long driveway with
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white-painted kerbs and the floodlit front of the office building,
which was now the post headquarters. Behind that would be the
tank lagers, with MIA1 Abrams main battle tanks lined up
shoulder-to-shoulder, hundreds of them, at nearly four million
bucks a piece.
We got out of the taxi and crossed the sidewalk and headed
for the main gate guard shack. My special unit badge got us
past it. It would get us past any U.S. Army checkpoint anywhere
except the inner ring of the Pentagon. We carried our bags
down the driveway.
‘Been here before?’ Summer asked me.
I shook my head as I walked.
‘I’ve been in Heidelberg with the infantry,’ I said. ‘Many
times.’
‘Is that near?’
‘Not far,’ I said.
There were broad stone steps leading up to the doors. The
whole place looked like a capitol building in some small state
back home. It was immaculately maintained. We went up the
steps and inside. There was a soldier at a desk just behind the
doors. Not an MP. Just a XII Corps office grunt. We showed