The gentle, wooded hills framing the East German village of Mupperg are ideal for a Sunday stroll but disfigured by a fearsome scarthe 500-yd.-wide death strip sealing off East from West. Guarded by Grepos (Communist border police) with orders to shoot anything that moves, the no man's land is sown with mines and foot traps, every one tightly laced with three rows of barbed wire.
To blond little Peter Eichhorn, 2½ years old and toddling through the woods beside his twelve-year-old brother, the cold war did not exist. He was aware only of the grass tickling his legs, the fun-crunch...