A guard knocks his comrade off the watchtower and gets stuck between wall and fence

On the morning of 19 January 1964 a soldier who had joined the NVA border troops only in November 1963 was on duty with his post leader at the Späthbrücke over the Teltow Canal, in the section between Sonnenallee and the Wredebrücke. The two took turns in the observation post every hour.

At about 9.10 a.m., as the post leader climbed the ladder to relieve him, the soldier hit him on the head with his machine pistol, so that he fell from the ladder. He then jumped down, pointed his loaded weapon at the injured man and told him to come with him over the Wall. The post leader refused and was sent staggering into the hinterland. The soldier took the ladder from the tower, climbed onto the Wall and, when a motorcycle patrol appeared on the bridge, fired a burst of four rounds at it, missing, and jumped down on the far side.

Here, however, the Wall stood a few metres back from the border, which was formed by a wire fence, so he was still on GDR territory. A West Berlin police officer and a customs officer were watching from the bridge. When the two NCOs fired two shots into the air from behind the Wall, the soldier shouted 'Don't shoot!', handed his unloaded weapon through an observation slit as ordered and climbed back. He was arrested by the Stasi. Questioned, he said he had wanted to flee since 1961/62, angry that his father's farm had been taken over by an agricultural cooperative.