National Affairs: On Berlin Time

As their train lumbered out of Bremerhaven, the U.S. Army wives newly arrived in Germany got their first view of the ruins of bombed-out towns, the ill-dressed people. At one stop they looked across the platform at a dingy line of boxcars, jammed with German women and children returned from Silesia, shabby and impassive in defeat. Said one wife: “This makes me sick at my stomach. Not out of sympathy. It’s civilization eating itself up.”

But as they pulled into Berlin’s suburban Wannsee station at one o’clock the next morning, the grim sights dimmed in the excitement of arrival. A brass band, on weary stand-by for five hours, blared out There’ll Be Some Changes Made. Flash bulbs popped.

Throughout the U.S. zone the scene was repeated. Husbands rushed aboard to sweep into their arms wives they had not seen for months; shy fathers nervously admired babies they had never seen before. In Bad Nauheim, Mrs. Alve Brooks threw herself happily into her husband’s arms (see cut), proudly found that he had been promoted from sergeant to second lieutenant a few days before.

“It’s Wonderful.” By week’s end the new life had become pleasant routine. Mrs. Isabella B. Luckenbach, wife of a lieutenant colonel in Berlin, glowed with approval of her big, ten-room house in suburban Dahlem. Said she: “Naturally I’m going to fix things the way I like, but all in all I think it’s wonderful. . . . I guess the biggest surprise was the plumbing. I always thought continental plumbing wasn’t up to our standards. But we’ve got the grandest tile bathrooms in this house —three of them—one on each floor.”

Another surprise was the abundance of servants. “At home in Washington I hadn’t been able to get servants for ages. Here I have a housekeeper, a gardener, [and] we will probably get a maid or nurse for the children, too.”

The first days were fine. Until the novelty of their new surroundings palled, they could forget the shock of their first impressions, the unsmiling faces of the conquered.