The Lucy Ghosts

Preface

The people of Germany, driven by the forever need to be a united nation once again, had only just torn the first few slabs in the Berlin Wall when I flew into Tegel Airport.

The reason for my visit was simple. I had never been to Berlin and I wanted to see this great concrete barrier, the definitive symbol of the Cold War.

It was a time of life when I decided to see the world for myself instead of through the safe eyes of the television news camera.

I stayed in East Berlin, actually drove through the infamous Checkpoint Charlie crossing shed before it was insignificantly hoisted up by a giant crane and delivered to the oblivion of a museum where it resides today. It was a time of learning and wonder, I saw the expectancy of a new era in the faces of those who passed me.

It was an exciting visit, and I was touched by the mushrooming hopes of a new Europe that seemed to promise peace and prosperity.

Yet there was a brittleness that went beyond the cold of the January air. I knew the promised land was a long way off, that the road to freedom would be tortuous and painful, that the destination we all wanted might never be reached.

But I was privileged and pleased to be there, to be brushed in the few fleeting moments of my life by history in the making.

Two instances stood out above the many I experienced.

The first symbolised youth and the relentless drive of enterprise that we take for granted in the West, that is only slowly being grasped by those in the East.

Like all the tourists who came, I wanted to take back a small piece of the wall that was now being torn down. I have to admit that, even though I had a small hammer and chisel, I actually cheated and bought my concrete chunk of history from a young man who was peddling his wares near Checkpoint Charlie.

Following my capitalistic instincts, I started to negotiate with the young man, not a German, but an Englishman. He was from Manchester (the same town I come from) and was working his way across Europe, selling sections of the Wall to tourists helped pay for his adventurous sojourn.

It was an odd moment, with Russian soldiers driving past in their Lada cars, the over-shadowing watch towers and barbed wire that had claimed hundreds of lives, and two Englishmen bargaining for a piece of painted concrete that had divided a nation and would now adorn my mantelpiece.

The second instance was more important and gave me the idea that led to this book.

I had flown a Citation jet into Berlin. After my short stay, I returned to the airport and waited for the plane to be refuelled.

The refueller was an old German, near to retirement age. As he pumped fuel into my wings, we spoke of Berlin and of the way things were.

He told me that, although he was a Berliner, he had never visited East Berlin since the wall was put up. In that time he had visited America, Africa and Australia.

As soon as the Wall came down he had crossed into the East, and now spent most of his weekends driving across East Germany with his wife. In his small Mercedes car, with a picnic hamper in the trunk, he had visited all the major cities, and regaled me with stories of the beauty of the countryside in the East.

'Nothing has changed,' he said in impeccable English. 'To go there is like going into the past. There are few modern buildings, the Russians never had the money to build, only to waste on defence. It is like it was before the war.'

'I didn't realise that,' I said.

'Oh, yes,' he replied before saying the words that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

'For them, the 1939 war has only just finished.'

It was the closest I came to seeing the world through the eyes of a German.

The tearing down of the Wall wasn't a step towards world peace, towards a safe future, as the rest of us saw it.

To many Germans, it was simply the end of a fifty-year war.

Since then, the Right Wing of German politics has orchestrated riots in Rostov, Ketzin, Dresden and Berlin. During that same period the united Germany has, after a painful birth, become a powerhouse of industry, commerce and social revolution.

To avoid another war, the German people have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the new Europe, the great Union that was born out of the Common Market. That Europe now envelops 27 member allied and peaceful states across the very land that for centuries pitted tribe against tribe in some of the greatest battles throughout history.

That peace has lasted but the economy has stumbled badly. Greece and other Mediterranean countries, because of their southern European attitudes have fallen behind the efforts of their harder working, more efficient northern partners.

A world economic decline can once again change the face of a peaceful Europe. Economic and technological superiority is the new war. And the Germans may once again find themselves at odds with their neighbours.

This book is about the end of the old Germany and the march into the new.

Hopefully, European countries will not fall under the influence of a strong, nationalistic and extremist leader. The collapse of the Russian Empire is another barrier removed from any such leader's ambitions.

This book is a warning to those who say it couldn't happen again.

And a reminder that there are many who still wish it would.