When the wall was up, every day was like you had a mission.
Any day we had alerts always.
[Malec] 709th Military Police Battalion Operation Sergeant, Master Sergeant William Whitman
describing what it was like serving in Grafenwoehr before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
There was always in the back of your head
that something could happen at any time.
So the tempo and the attitude was much different.
[Malec] Sergeant Whitman, then Private Whitman, 
was stationed with the 536th Military Police Company
when he personally witnessed how life changed in Germany 20 years ago.
I was dating a girl up in Hof, which is not far from the old border,
and she picked me up because, obviously, everybody in Germany was celebrating.
We drove up to where she was from, and all I saw was Trabants,
old East German vehicles, all over the road, parked on the sides of the roads,
and the shopping malls were full of East Germans.
[Malec] Twenty years later, Sergeant Whitman joins both fellow soldiers
and community members remembering the fall of a wall,
one which separated a country for 28 years.
[♪band playing upbeat music♪]
The commemoration featured a performance by the Grafenwoehr City Band,
along with a display of a piece of the wall given to the 709th MPs
to honor their work in defending freedom along a border,
a wall eventually torn down.
No matter how hard it is, no matter how big a wall is,
if people want a change and they stick to their beliefs,
they're going to see it through.
[♪techno music♪] That's the Army Today from Soldiers Radio and Television in Washington.
For the latest military news, visit the Army's homepage at army.mil.
