Caught in Cold War: Akron veteran recalls 1965 capture in East Germany
When the border guards drew their guns, Moses Herrin knew he was in trouble.
The Akron veteran and his Army buddy Fred Matthews usually had no difficulties crossing the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie. This time, the East German guards ordered them out of the vehicle and began to search it carefully.
It was only a matter of time before they found the girl in the secret compartment.
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“They pounded and they screamed: ‘Where are you hiding her?’ ” Herrin recalled. “We ‘didn’t know.’ We didn’t say nothing. And finally they heard a peep.”
The Americans were caught trying to help a 13-year-old East German escape to her parents in West Germany during the Cold War in 1965.
“We knew we were busted,” said Herrin, 81, a Highland Square resident.
While growing up in Akron, Herrin never dreamed he would be at the center of an international incident. He didn’t have a care in the world when he lived on Hickory Street in the Little Cuyahoga Valley.
“I was the loudest kid on the block,” he said. “Everybody thought I was going to be a preacher ’cause I was always running my mouth.”
He attended Crosby Elementary and West Junior High, and graduated in 1960 from Central High School, where he lettered in football.
Herrin landed his first job as an assistant florist on West Hill, but got fired two days later after breaking a glass gas pipe. He recalls walking down West Market Street and wondering what he should do next.
“Hey, I’m going to join the service,” he decided.
Soldier served as German translator
At age 19, he entered basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where officers wanted him to be a truck driver until he took a language test and scored the highest grade in his unit. Instead, he served as a translator.
Herrin became fluent in German while stationed at Coffey Barracks in Ludwigsburg, West Germany.
“I dealt with Germans who needed a translator,” he said. “That’s all I did.”
Fellow soldiers nicknamed him “Ticket” because he was always going somewhere: Switzerland, Spain, Denmark.
“Whenever I got back, they wanted to hear the stories,” he said. “Most of them never left the barracks.”
Germany was an eye-opening experience for the African American. He felt a sense of unity there. People were kind and he experienced little racism.
“Fell in love with it,” he said. “Became absorbed with it. Became obsessed with it.”
After he and his buddy Fred Matthews, a native of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, were discharged from the Army in 1964, they decided to live in West Berlin as civilians. Ironically, Herrin and Matthews embarked on their most daring missions after the service.
Hanging out at a sports hall popular with U.S. soldiers, they met a couple of guys in 1965 who offered them easy money “if you can keep your mouths shut, play it cool and drive an automobile.” They would split 1,000 marks, the equivalent of $250, a monthly salary for an average German.
“To us, it was a fortune,” Herrin said.
So they agreed to do the job, whatever it was. They learned they would be helping East Germans escape to freedom through a smuggling ring.
“I always speculated on what it was about,” Herrin said. “It was clear that they had some kind of connection with our government. I don’t know how high and I don’t know to what degree.”
Secret missions in East Berlin
The smugglers gave him a German driver’s license and other documents. They provided a Peugeot 404 automobile that had been redesigned so it didn’t have a drive shaft in the front. When the seats swung up, a false transmission housing was beneath the floor mats. The 5-foot-8 compartment was just big enough to hide a person.
Tourists were allowed to visit East Berlin, but all foreigners had to be out by the midnight curfew. East Germans were not allowed to cross.
Herrin and Matthews posed as tourists on a night out. They would cash West German marks for East German marks, get approval to cross the border and then drive into the city, hitting a few bars to maintain the ruse.
At a prearranged location, they would pick up an East German escapee and then park in a secluded spot where they could access the hiding place. When they returned to the border checkpoint, guards let them pass.
“What gave us a break? We were both African American and we spoke fluent German and that relaxed them,” Herrin said.
The first person they helped, an East German nurse, wept with joy after reaching the streets of West Berlin. Also appreciative was the young man who fled service in the East German military.
“I still remember them as if it was yesterday,” he said.
Sadly, Herrin also recalls the woman who was too large to fit in the compartment.
“We pushed and we tried and we shoved, and we couldn’t get her in there,” he said.
She cried when they had to leave her behind.
Next was the 13-year-old girl hoping to reunite with her parents. Herrin and Matthews picked her up Sept. 19, 1965, and hid her in the car, but when they got to the border crossing before midnight, the guards pulled machine guns on them. Someone had tipped them off.
“They were waiting on us with that last girl,” he said.
Captured at Berlin Wall checkpoint
Guards hammered on the vehicle until the teen let out a whimper. They pulled her out of the hiding space, and Herrin never saw her again. He wishes he knew what happened to her.
Arrested on charges of “aiding flight from the republic,” the frightened, bewildered Americans, both 23, were held in an East Berlin jail. A floodlight lit up the cell every 15 minutes at night. Guards watched through a hole in the door.
“The first seven months was mostly interrogation,” Herrin said. “They had me and Fred separated and we were isolated.”
Back home in Akron, Herrin’s distraught mother, Helen Montgomery, told the Beacon Journal that her son probably was “just moseying around where he shouldn’t have been.”
“Moses is so full of life,” she said. “He wants to see and do everything, but he is trying to do it too fast.”
The prisoners were represented by one lawyer each from East Germany, West Germany and the United States. They were transported to Potsdam for a trial Dec. 21.
“We were told to bow our heads and say we were sorry: ‘We admit what we did was wrong,’ Herrin said. “And then they hit us: Eight years prison.”
After the sentencing, the stunned inmates were transported to Bautzen, an East German prison on the Poland-Czech border.
“We deplore the conviction of these two Americans by the East German regime,” U.S. State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey announced.
Herrin and Matthews were held in a cell with two beds, a wooden table, a heat register and barred windows. There was no running water. The toilet was a hole in the floor.
The prison meals left a lot to be desired.
“Oh, man. Cauliflower,” Herrin said. “That’s why I don’t like it today because they served it 10 different ways.”
Life in East German prison
The Americans performed labor, putting together electrical components. A guard escorted them to the work station, allowing them to return to their cell for meals. They could buy items from a prison kiosk with their meager earnings.
For entertainment, they played chess and read. They were allowed to spend a half-hour outside each day for exercise. Each week, they got to see an East German propaganda film.
Other prisoners included two Iranians, one Chinese and one Spaniard, all charged with similar crimes of trying to help someone escape. Herrin didn’t know it at the time, but the facility also housed two other Americans: Mary Helen Battle of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Bill Lovett of San Francisco.
Herrin and Matthews tried to keep their spirits up. Guards kept telling them that they wouldn’t really have to serve eight years. A U.S. attorney showed up to say that the government was working to get them out.
So they waited. And waited. And waited.
Sixteen months passed.
“So finally one day, it came,” Herrin said. “Boom.”
They found out they were leaving. East German officials released them Feb. 3, 1967, along with Battle and Lovett.
The prisoners packed up their belongings and rode in a car to the Berlin Wall, where they were transferred to West German authorities. They felt jubilation as they crossed into West Berlin, yelling “Freedom!” in German.
“I got out and kissed the ground,” Herrin said.
Story told around world
The Americans spoke at a news conference, the last time all four were together. Herrin regrets that they never reunited.
Matthews stayed in West Berlin while Herrin moved to Denmark.
“The sad thing is that I lost contact with Fred in ’72,” Herrin said. “I don’t know whether he’s still alive or not.”
Their story was told in newspapers and newscasts around the world. Herrin also recounted the smuggling adventure in a 1967 article for Ebony magazine.
For more than 30 years, Herrin lived in Europe, including Germany, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Greece and the Netherlands. He delivered food, labored in factories, performed construction, worked as a disc jockey and did other jobs.
He particularly enjoyed the freedom of Amsterdam, a city that never sleeps.
“I went there to stay for two weeks,” he said. “Guess what? I ended up staying 8½ years. I’ve never been in a city where I lost track of time.”
His five children were born in Sweden and Denmark.
When the Berlin Wall fell Nov. 9, 1989, Herrin was watching it on television in Hamburg.
“For me, it was emotional,” he said.
He still avoids certain neighborhoods whenever he returns to the German capital.
Invisible line in capital city
“Although the wall is gone, for me, psychologically, I can’t function in East Berlin,” Herrin said. “Whenever I get caught over there mistakenly, on the tram or the S-Bahn or whatever, I panic because all the signs and everything are not familiar and I want to rush back to West Berlin.”
He strongly encourages all young people to get passports to see what’s out in the world, although maybe they should think twice before joining a smuggling ring.
Herrin moved back to Akron in 1993, but has visited Europe at least a dozen times since then, most recently in 2021. He hopes to return soon.
“If I had the money, I’d have been gone already,” he said with a chuckle.
But he’ll steer clear of the former East Berlin.
“There is that invisible wall still there,” he said.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Veteran Moses Herrin recalls capture in East Germany during Cold War
