The Silver Ring

BERLIN

The flight landed at Tegel Airport in Berlin. I had to go through immigration and customs. When I cleared those and walked into the main hall of the airport, I saw a man with a sign-Matthew Gray. I walked up to the man who introduced himself as Hans Busse. He was a representative of Recovery of the Fallen. He welcomed me to Berlin and would  take me to meet my team.

We drove through the streets of Berlin and coming into the center, there was the Brandenburg Gate. We continued to the Reichsdag building. Along the sides there were new office buildings. Hans parked the car, and told me to leave my things there. We would be meeting the group, then going to our hotel.

The security guard at the entrance of the building waved us through. It appeared he knew Hans well. We walked through the lobby and got into the elevator. We stopped at the third floor and walked down the hall. We stopped at room 1939. I wondered if this room was chosen for the reason it  matched the year in which World War II began.

Hans opened the door and entered the room with me behind him. There were several young people in the room. This would be my team in the "Recovery of the Fallen" project. They were young, but I was the youngest to be sure. I would guess they were probably all juniors or seniors in college or recent graduates. I felt they were looking at me, like, who is this little kid. I knew the look, I used it on my brother all the time.

Hans introduced the team. I would be the only American. The members were from Russia, Karp Polzin and Klavaya Konstantinova. Leo Kruse and Mose Brandt were from Germany. Hilde Maessen was from Holland,. Rounding out the teams were Mykyta Pasternak from the Ukraise and Carole Thomas from Switzerland. This is Matthew Gray from the United States. He wrote quite a paper on the Battle of Seelow Heights. He is fluent in German, he looked over to Leo and Mose and said, he speaks better than you, so be careful. 

After the introductions, we sat around a table, maps were on the wall. We were shown the areas in which we would be working. There were other teams working too, but our area would be in the thick of where the Seelow Heights battle had taken place. Our headquarters, Hans said, will be in Frankfurt on der Oder. It is the nearest city, and it is a lot easier than commuting back and forth to Berlin. We will be going to the hotel now. Get cleaned up, we meet for dinner in the restaurant. Get some sleep, we leave at 6:00am from in front of the hotel.

We all got up, left the room and the building. A van pulled up, Hans said to me, don't worry about your things, they are already in the van. We all got in, and went to the hotel. It wasn't a flashy hotel like we might see in a resort area at home, but a solid looking building with plenty of old world charm. We were given our keys and off to our rooms we went. Dinner was great, but people were looking to get some sleep to prepare for tomorrow.