Berlin: Ever Ready

Smoothly and quickly, Technical Sergeant John H. Simpson of East St. Louis. Ill., swung the 90-mm. gun barrel of his M48 Patton tank down a sandy lane in West Berlin’s 15-sq. mi. Grunewald Forest, aimed at a dark green box 920 yards away. “If that was a Russian tank.” he yelled. “I would have had him with one round before he backed into the bushes.”

Simpson and 3,000 other U.S. soldiers last week were taking part in one of the biggest maneuvers ever staged in the cramped confines of West Berlin. Dubbed “Ever Ready II,” the three-day exercises employed the new M-14 automatic rifle and the M-60 machine guns in Berlin for the first time, along with artillery, armored amphibious personnel carriers, and helicopters that rained psychological warfare leaflets (“Lay down your arms. Live to see your home again”).

The “Blue” attacking force of the 3rd Battle Group of the 6th Infantry Division scored in a sneak amphibious attack on the defending “Reds” of the 2nd Battle Group when they maneuvered three miles up the Havel River, hit the Reds from the rear. Next day, the Reds counterattacked with a massive firecracker barrage simulating an air and artillery offensive witnessed by General Lucius D. Clay, President Kennedy’s representative in Berlin. Said Clay: “This was a well-laid maneuver. Everyone took it seriously.”

Everyone also knew that the soundness and competence of 30,000 Allied troops could not be enough to defeat a full-scale Russian offensive against Berlin. But the exercises helped boost West Berlin’s morale and demonstrated that the city will not be easy picking for an invader. Said U.S. Commandant Major General Albert Watson: “We are strong enough to force the other side to go all out. That means that taking West Berlin would not only be very costly, but that hostilities would not be limited to Berlin.”