An
Interview with T.H.E. Hill, the author of Voices Under Berlin: The Tale
of a
Monterey Mary.
Check out the book review too!
What
inspired you to write
this novel in a humorous vein?
I’m
one of those authors who sits down in front of a typewriter (these days
a
computer) and lets the characters tell him what to write. Voices
Under Berlin did not start out to be a humorous novel, but
every time I put the characters ‘on page’ in the set-up for a new
chapter, the
characters decided that the story should be funny. In retrospect, their
decision was a good one. I’ve gotten some very good reactions to the
humor in Voices Under Berlin. One reader said
that he laughed so hard that he almost fell out of his chair.
And
now that the similarity between the humor in Voices Under
Berlin and the humor in Catch-22 and M*A*S*H*
has
been pointed out to me, I can see why the characters were right to make
it
humorous. The situations described in all three novels are simply
absurd. A
serious “Literary” with a capital ‘L’ treatment of the material would
fall
flat, because the reader’s first inclination is to think that the truth
is
being exaggerated for comic effect. While the truth is being stretched
a little
bit, it is not being stretched as far as those who have not lived the
life
described in these novels suspect.
We
used to say “you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”
Being able
to laugh at what was going on around you was the only way to maintain
your
sanity. The characters in Voices Under Berlin
clearly remembered that, and brought it to the novel with them.
Information
on the manual
morse is very accurate, what personal experience did you have using
morse code?
My
personal experience with morse code is limited to “da dit da dit, da da
dit da,”
which is morse for “CQ,” the morse shorthand for “calling any station
that can
hear me.” My indirect knowledge is from the great many “ditties” (morse
ops) I
worked with during my time in the Army. They were some of the most
seriously
disturbed people I’ve ever met. The only ones worse were the linguists.
(I can
say that because I am a linguist.)
To
give you an example, I’ll tell you a story that got cut out of Voices Under Berlin in the final edit.
They
walked into the bay. Nobody reacted to their presence. The staccato
click of
typewriters echoed the sound of Lieutenant Shoes’ shoes on the floor.
About halfway
down the row of positions they came to sergeant Galworthy.
“Best
damn morse op I ever knew,” screamed the major. The sound of sixteen
morse positions
with the volume turned up so loud that some of the ops just had their
headphones hanging loose around their necks made it impossible to talk
in a
normal voice. The major walked on, not wanting to wake up the sergeant.
Sergeant
Galworthy was asleep with his head resting in the key well of his
typewriter.
He never kept the cover on because he typed so fast that the keys got
stuck all
the time and he had to reach in and free them up. That also meant that
when he
crashed on position, which was every time he sat down practically, his
head
fell into the key well. The letters from the typewriter keys marched
across his
forehead upside down.
“That’s
a priority-1 target on cast-iron cover. I wouldn’t want anybody else on
it,”
said the major.
“But,
he’s asleep,” said Lieutenant Shoes in disbelief.
“I
know,” said the major. “It’s an exhausting job.”
The
major left. Lieutenant Shoes was alone. He felt that he was the only
sane man
in a looney bin.
“Don’t
let them see that you are afraid,” he said to himself. “Demonstrate
that you
are their superior. Yes, that’s what they said at OCS.”
He
needed a daring plan. He tried to think, but the cacophony of dits and
da-s
made it hard to concentrate. One by one all the circuits fell silent,
except
for one.
“Da-da-da-dit da-da-dit-da,” it said over and over again.
He
remembered that he could copy morse code too. He was very good at
copying morse
code. He could show them he was better than any of them at copying
morse code.
He’d show the major that they didn’t need that drunken bum Galworthy—he
had
smelled the scent of liquor as they passed his position.
Lieutenant
Shoes pulled a typewriter table up next to sergeant Galworthy’s. He
grabbed a
pair of headphones and plugged in to sergeant Galworthy’s circuit. He
needn’t
have bothered. Sergeant Galworthy had the volume turned up high enough
to wake
the dead. Lieutenant Shoes could have copied the circuit at the other
end of
the bay.
The
circuit was silent.
Lieutenant
Shoes looked at his watch. He had been sitting there for eight minutes
and
thirty five seconds. It was exactly two o’clock in the afternoon.
“What
time is that in military time?” he asked himself.
The
Russian op in Wuensdorf looked at his watch. It was 14:00 Local. Time
to make
his schedule with MOD, Moscow. He reached out his hand and lazily sent
his
call.
Sergeant
Galworthy rose up from his typewriter pillow like a man possessed. He
didn’t
open his eyes. His hands flew over the keyboard:
KNDV
KNDV KNDV DE SGGF SGGF SGGF QTC 5 QTC
Lieutenant
Shoes was so surprised by sergeant Galworthy’s metamorphosis, that he
missed
the call-up.
The
Russian op in Moscow woke up, looked at his watch and answered.
Sergeant
Galworthy’s hands flew over the keyboard once again:
SGGF
SGGF SGGF DE KNDV KNDV KNDV QTC 3 QRV KK
Lieutenant
Shoes got that.
The
Russian op in Wuensdorf moved the text of his first coded message over
next to
his speed key and began to send the 365 mixed five number-letter groups
in the
message, the lazy speed of his call-up forgotten. The sooner he got the
traffic
out, the sooner he could get back to his book. At his normal 45 groups
a
minute, it would only take him about eight minutes to send this one.
Sergeant
Galworthy’s hands raised high in the air and smashed down on the keys
of his
mill like a flailing machine. The springs behind those keys were heavy
and you
needed to hit them hard. The mixed five number-letter groups marched
across the
page in rows of ten followed by a carriage return that hurled the page
all the
way back to the right and made the table shake. It was a good thing
that army
typewriters are heavy, otherwise it might have flown off the table.
By
the thirtieth group, Lieutenant Shoes was in trouble. By the fiftieth,
his
fingers hurt. By the ninetieth, he had stopped trying to keep up.
Sergeant
Galworthy, on the other hand, was still blithely smashing the keys of
his
typewriter to the beat of the dits and da-s of the Russian op in
Wuensdorf.
Lieutenant
Shoes sat there staring in disbelief. Watching over sergeant
Galworthy’s
shoulder, when he could keep up with the Russian op and his speed key,
which
was about one group in five, Lieutenant Shoes could see that sergeant
Galworthy
wasn’t missing a beat.
The
sched ended at 14:37 Local, that's 13:37 Zulu. Sergeant Galworthy
slumped back
down into his typewriter. Jeff, the duty analyst, came over and
carefully tore
off the copy, so as not to wake sergeant Galworthy.
Lieutenant
Shoes looked at Jeff in disbelief.
“Does
he always do that?”
“Yes,
sir.”
“Find
out what he drinks. I’ll bring in a case for everybody else tomorrow,”
said
Lieutenant Shoes and left the bay in search of the major.
©
T.H.E. Hill, 2008.
How did
the Cold War affect
you personally?
The
Cold War and I grew up together. I was born during the Berlin Airlift,
and came
of age inside the confines of the Berlin Wall. I was a direct
participant in
some events, and an indirect participant in others. The Russian
invasions of
Alas,
poor Cold War. I knew it well. It was a war of infinite jest and most
excellent
fancy, fought more often in the shadows of the mind than to the death,
yet the
lives of millions hung in the balance. It is a war without monuments,
but not
without casualties. 136 people were confirmed killed while trying to
cross the
Berlin Wall into West Berlin. Major Arthur D. Nicholson, the last
casualty of
the Cold War, was a classmate. That makes it very personal.
In
all the years that I and others like me fought the Secret Cold War, it
was
under the banner of “Peace is our most important product.” That was our
motto,
because the alternative was unthinkable. We accomplished our mission.
The Iron
Curtain came down without the Cold War turning hot.
On
a recent visit to Berlin, we met an old German couple, who, when they
discovered
that I am an American, thanked me for the food and coal brought in on
the
Airlift that kept them and their new-born son alive that very cold
winter, and
for keeping them out of the clutches of the Russians. They also
apologized that
the younger generation has forgotten those things, and does not like
America anymore.
A
friend who still teaches Russian at DLIWC put their apology into
perspective
when he pointed out that almost all his students these days were born
after the
Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The Cold War is history to his students, but
not to
me. The Cold War and I grew up together.
The
Field Station Berlin Vets Group is sponsoring an action to Save
Teufelsberg!. Teufelsberg is the hill upon which Field Station
Berlin was located. They want to preserve it as the "Major Arthur D.
Nicholson" Cold War Memorial, in recognition of the countless men and
women of the Allied Armed Forces who resolutely stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with
the West Berliners during the Cold War, ensuring that the island of
freedom
known as "West Berlin" remained free. Follow this
link to
learn how you can help.
Did you
base any of your
characters on people you met through the years?
The
dedication of Voices Under Berlin is
really the answer to this question. Voices
Under Berlin is dedicated to all the countless Kevins and Gabbies,
Fast
Eddies and Megs who fought the Secret Cold War for one tour and went
home to do
something else. Kevin and Gabbie, Fast Eddie and Meg are characters in Voices Under Berlin. They are not actual
people I knew, but they are rather stereotypes, amalgams of various
people I
knew at different times, and of assorted incarnations of myself.
I
wanted to record what fighting the Secret Cold War was like for the
generations
of people like Kevin and Fast Eddie who are sworn to silence, before
they move
on to the undiscovered country. When their (grand)children ask "What
did
you do in the Cold War?," most Secret Cold War veterans, have to say
something
trite, like "If I told you, I'd have to shoot you." I wanted to give
voice to some of their stories so that the stories would not disappear
when the
people who lived them shuffle off this mortal coil. Voices
Under Berlin may not be exactly the story that each and
every one of them lived and would like to tell, but it is close enough
so that
people who fought the Secret Cold War in places other than Berlin say
that they
felt right at home while reading it. I wanted Secret Cold War vets to
be able
to answer their children and grandchildren with: "I can't tell you
exactly, but why don't you read Voices
Under Berlin?
Surprisingly,
it has also gone the other way. Children of Secret Cold War vets have
written
to get signed copies for their parents. I’ve been happy to oblige.
Could
you describe your fact
gathering process. What was the most difficult part: the fiction end or
its
base of non-fiction?
I
would say the base of non-fiction. While you can play around with the
historical background a little bit, you have to keep it close enough to
the
truth to be recognizable, so that people who actually lived through it
will not
keep pointing fingers at you and saying “It wasn’t like that at all.”
One
early reader of the manuscript actually did say that I had sent Kevin
and
Gabbie to a museum that had not yet reopened after World War II at the
time of
the novel. That sent me scurrying off to my collection of Army booklets
on
Berlin from the time period of Voices
Under Berlin to find the opening hours and the price of admission
again
before I politely said that I had documentary evidence to the contrary.
I
eventually decided to reprint the whole series of Army booklets on
Berlin that
made up one of the pillars of the historical background of the novel.
Not only
did the reprint make it easier for me to fact-check when someone said
that I
had gotten the history wrong, but Berlin
in Early Cold-War Army Booklets: 1946-1958 has also found a good
reception
with the reading public. On Amazon.com, it is listed as the “Frequently
Bought
Together” companion of Voices Under
Berlin.
Could
you tell us more about
your background as a grad of The Defense Language Institute?
The
Defense Language Institute (West Coast Branch) in Monterey, California
(known
today as the Defense Language Institute
Foreign Language Center) is an unusual military institution. Its
primary
function is to teach members of the four armed services how to speak a
foreign
language at a professional level in a short period of time.
I
wound up in DLIWC more or less by accident. When I graduated from high
school,
there was no money for me to go to college, and I didn’t want to stay
at home,
so I joined the Army. The Army gives you all sorts of tests when you go
through
the induction center, and one of them was an artificial language test
to see
how well you could learn a foreign language. I scored rather well,
which sent a
sergeant my way to see if he could con me into “volunteering” for
Language
School.
I
was surprised by this, because I had signed up for Spanish in high
school, and
after 3 days the teacher had called me aside and said “You have
absolutely no
talent for learning foreign languages. Get out of my classroom and
never darken
my door again!” These days I tell this story with a rather large smile
on my
face, because I speak five languages: Russian, Dutch, Polish, Czech and
German.
My Spanish teacher was mistaken, and the Army test was right. Too bad
I’ve
forgotten her name and can’t let her know about her mistake.
I
was at
I
lived in an old World War II pre-fab clap-board barracks with open
40-man bays.
Privacy was not a word in our vocabulary in those barracks. One
morning, I woke
to find the guy who lived on the next bunk curled up on the top of his
footlocker in the fetal position in just his skivies. One of the other
guys in
the bay who was in class with him went over and shook him by the
shoulder. “Get
a move on. You’re going to be late for class!” The guy on the
footlocker said
“Don’t touch me! I’m a past passive participle.” We left him where he
was and
headed for the chow hall, making a stop in the orderly room to tell the
Top
Kick about this. When we got back from class that morning, the guy on
the
footlocker was gone and so were his mattress and all his possessions.
We never
saw or heard from him again.
The
training was effective though. I can still recall some of the dialogues
I
learned.
Does
your next book The Day Before the Wall have the
similar
element of humor? Is there any news on its publication?
The Day
Before the Wall is not
humorous at all. It
is a straight spy thriller. It is the story of a young American
sergeant in
Military Intelligence who has a piece of information that the East
Germans are
prepared to kill for. He knows that construction of the Berlin Wall
will begin
at
The Day
Before the Wall is in
revision. That means
that I am re-reading it and re-writing where necessary before it goes
off to
visit publishers. The process, however, is getting some competition
from
another novel project called “Reunification,” in which an American
soldier goes
back to post-wall, reunified Berlin and meets his old “long-haired
dictionary.”
Michael was assigned to Berlin in the 1970s.
He was
adventurous, he spoke German, he enjoyed the city, he had a
“long-haired
dictionary” named Ilse. There was only one thing wrong. Mike was a spook. His job prohibited “close and
continuing relationships” with locals, especially female locals. He was
given a
choice: dump Ilse and keep his job, or keep Ilse and be reassigned to
an
infantry unit, to go tramping through the mud at Grafenwöhr. Mike
chooses the job,
and the story picks up again thirty-five years later, when he returns
to
Berlin.
After he left Berlin, Mike had a successful
career
with the State Department. He was married to Liz, but she divorced him
after
his affair with a university student in Vienna who reminded him of
Ilse. He has
a grown daughter named Samantha. Mike has retired to academia,
specializing in
International Relations. He has been awarded a fellowship at the
American
Academy in Berlin to work on a book: Dissuasion
Techniques Applied against Dissidents by the Stasi.
After Mike dumped her, Ilse married another
American, who took his discharge from the army in Europe, and stayed in
Berlin
with her. He, unfortunately, was killed in a traffic accident ten years
ago.
Ilse has a grown son named Dieter. She still lives in Berlin.
Dieter works in the old Stasi Archives that
Mike is
using for his research. Dieter invites Mike to a party at his house to
celebrate the start of the new semester, and the arrival of the new
group of
researchers. Mike does not realize that Dieter is Ilse’s son, because
Dieter
has his father’s surname. Ilse and Mike meet at the party. The plot
thickens.
Samantha drops by Berlin to visit her father,
and
meets Dieter. Their romantic attraction is immediately evident, but the
plot
gets even thicker, because the unspoken question of whether or not Mike
is also
Dieter’s father hangs menacingly in the air.
That is the stage setting, but I cannot say
how it
will end. I’m waiting for the characters to tell me
what happens next, but I am also trying to keep them from
talking so much so that I can finish The
Day Before the Wall.
For
more of my humorous spy fiction, you’ll have to wait for the collection
of my
short stories to come out. It’s entitled A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Dead Drop. But it is a long
way from
being ready for outsiders to look at.