W. German Hats Leave Guards Cold
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EAST BERLIN — West German border guards are shivering in new hats this winter, an East German newspaper reported, while their counterparts across the frontier are snug in Russian fur.
The newspaper Volksarmee (People’s Army), which serves the 60,000 East German guards on the border with the West, quoted a soldier’s letter to the West German guards’ newspaper BGS complaining that his new beret did not cover his ears.
BGS had sarcastically suggested he pull the beret down until it did.
East German border guards patroling the floodlighted border strips and manning watchtowers wear heavy, Russian-style fur hats with ear flaps. Volksarmee, whose readers are forbidden to talk to their Western counterparts facing them across barbed wire and fences, commented with a poem:
In winter, the soldier for his duty appears ;
Green is his beret and red his ears.
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