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On purely humanitarian grounds, there was wide feeling that his U.S. detachment at Checkpoint Charlie had a moral duty to minister to Peter Fechter as he lay dying. Reasoned a Berlin cab driver: "Even in war, both sides respect the right to collect the wounded." But in the explosive context of the cold war, there are few clear-cut rules. One solution would have been to call an army doctor, but in the excitement of the moment no one thought of calling a medic or even a priest. (The only bystander who made any effort to help Fechter was a West German policeman who dropped two first aid packages over the Wall.) But any attempt by U.S. troops to remove him would have invited political repercussions and, just possibly, shooting. If they had whisked Fechter through Checkpoint Charlie to a West Berlin hospital, the Russians would have had a readymade excuse for manhunting forays in the U.S. sector, the perfect pretext for kidnaping defectors.
Ambulance Call. General Watson, 53, a cool, meticulous professional, has only one standing order on which he can take major action: if the Russians move into West Berlin, start fighting. Thus, responsibility for caution lies with policymakers in Washington, London and Paris. After the Fechter incident, Watson suggested stationing an ambulance at Checkpoint Charlie, finally got permission after the proposal had gone all the way to the Pentagon and the White House. Even that token gesture was of limited value, surrounded as it was by Washington's careful insistence that any wounded fugitive it might pick up would have to be taken to a hospital in the Soviet zone. "It would be kinder," shrugged one officer, "to give the poor devil a loaded revolver."
But West Berliners were too upset to be concerned with such niceties. They saw only that the mighty U.S., while pledged to preserve the life of the city, had not lifted a finger to help one desperate lad. As news of the tragedy spread, thousands of solid Berlin citizens and hordes of the city's rowdy Halbstarke (Teddy boys) flocked to the Friedrichstrasse border point to gape and grumble. They jeered and elbowed their own West Berlin cops, booed shamefaced U.S. troops. For the first time in West Berlin's long love affair with the G.I., they chorused: "Ami [Americans], Go Home!" The West Berliners vented their rage on Ulbricht by raining curses and rocks on his Grepos and Vopos, and turned the barrage against their own police when the latter tried to reason with them.
Guarding the Guard. Berliners' most satisfying target for three straight evenings was the bus that shuttles the 25-man Soviet guard from Checkpoint Charlie to the Russian war memorial in the British sector near the Brandenburg Gate.
On the third and wildest night, the mob broke 18 windows in the Soviet bus while its occupants cowered with heads in hands; later they made a bonfire of two old cars in an attempt to block its return After beating back the Bereitschaftspoli-zei, Berlin's crack riot squads, the mob surged out of control around a three-jeep U.S. patrol, and stood catcalling and shaking their fists until MPs came after them brandishing M-14 rifles with fixed (but sheathed) bayonets.