U.S. Troops Along Iron Curtain Still Feel the Threat of War ‘Every Day’ : Europe: If leaders on both sides talk about tensions easing, nobody has bothered to tell Sgt. Jake Fryer.

If the Cold War really is over, nobody bothered to tell U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. Jake Fryer.

Standing in full battle dress, well-worn boots polished a bottomless black, a .45-caliber automatic strapped across his chest, Fryer looks down from the guard tower at Observation Post Alpha across the metal border fence into East Germany. Two East German border troops carrying AK-47 assault rifles saunter by less than 50 yards away.

“Nobody in my chain of command has told me anything about our mission changing,” the 21-year Army veteran says. “On the contrary. The commander in chief told me to keep training my soldiers. Although they opened that fence in a lot of different places, there is still a threat, and we feel it every day.”

While senior political and military leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain talk about tensions easing and the threat of war diminishing, these front-line American troops stationed along the German border are still poised to fight. Their weapons are loaded, their machine-gun-armed jeeps still patrol night and day, and their Abrams tanks are fueled and stocked with 120-millimeter cannon shells.

U.S. Army Gen. John R. Galvin, supreme commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, said in a recent interview that while the threat of a Soviet surprise attack on the West today is virtually nil, “there is a lot of unpredictability and instability in the Warsaw Pact, including the Soviet Union. It is the duty of everyone--from me down to the private on the border--to be aware of the might of the Soviet Union.”

Galvin said that instability creates new dangers for the West.

“We’re witnessing the fall of an empire,” the four-star U.S. general said. “That normally doesn’t happen without great upheaval.”

As a result, there is no formal change in the mission of the U.S. 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, one of two forward-deployed, 5,000-man, fast-reaction combat and reconnaissance forces guarding the border between East and West Germany. The 11th Cav is based at Fulda, West Germany, in the middle of the storied Fulda Gap, a broad valley that for centuries has been a favored invasion route across Central Europe.

The gap has been used by the armies of Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. American military planners consider it to be a likely avenue of attack by Soviet tank armies based in East Germany and have deployed troops to conduct continuous surveillance across its gentle plains.

Euphoria over the revolution sweeping the nations of Eastern Europe has not spread to the American troops manning these forward observation posts. If President Bush can express his trust of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, these soldiers believe their job is to verify that Gorbachev cannot and will not use his 380,000 troops stationed in East Germany to mount an invasion of the West.

While the 11th Cav’s daily routine has changed little since the Berlin Wall and the fortified German border began to crumble on Nov. 9, new responsibilities have been added. With thousands of East German civilians crossing the border daily, U.S. troops are increasingly called on to perform covert--and sometimes overt--surveillance of this joyous and seemingly harmless traffic.

Sgt. 1st Class John Bradford of Chattanooga, Tenn., assigned to the 11th Cav headquarters at Fulda, said that East Germans and Soviets are taking advantage of the newly porous border to spy on West Germany.

“We believe that three of every 100 coming across is coming with less than honorable intentions,” Bradford said. “We’re sure they’re sending over officers to update their target folders, looking at all the bridges to see if they can support their T-80 tanks. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s very frustrating.”

Bradford said he looked in the rear-view mirror of his car the other day and noticed that the East German “tourist” in the car behind him was actually a “GAK”--an elite East German border commando--whom he had been observing in uniform through binoculars and telephoto lenses for more than two years. When Bradford wheeled around in his seat to photograph the East German, the little car took a quick turn and disappeared.

American soldiers are still prohibited from talking with East German and Soviet troops, but both sides have adopted a noticeably less hostile stance. One day recently, a two-man East German border patrol stopped to smile and wave at their American counterparts across the fence. One of the East Germans pretended to throw his rifle over the border in a joking pantomime that their war had ended.

Gen. Galvin said that American forces, while continuing their border surveillance job, are trying to do it in a less visible way.

“We are changing our stance along the border,” he said. “We don’t want to look tough and strong. We don’t want to challenge them in a belligerent way.”

U.S. patrols are avoiding the main highways used by the East German visitors, sticking to back roads and forest trails. In some cases, they are taking the machine guns off the hoods of their jeeps, keeping them out of sight. Occasionally, they are dressing in civilian clothes to monitor the constant traffic from the East.

Over the longer term, Galvin expects the role of U.S. troops in Europe to change radically as budget cuts at home and arms control negotiations with the Warsaw Pact force sharp cuts in the number of American soldiers stationed on European soil.

Senior U.S. officials said that the current force of 310,000 U.S. troops in Europe will probably number no more than 100,000 to 150,000 by the mid-1990s. Galvin’s NATO planners are working to revise war plans to reflect smaller forces and a less threatening enemy.

“As your forces get smaller, you still have the same terrain to handle,” the general noted. “That creates problems of mobility . . . . You have to enhance your mobility while trying to limit his.”

Current NATO war-fighting doctrine calls for meeting every Soviet thrust into the West with force, denying the invaders any West German territory. NATO “might have to trade some space for time” in a future conflict if its forces on the border were thinned out, he said.

Other factors are working against the U.S. role in Germany. The West German populace, already tired of window-rattling fighter sorties and field-crushing tank exercises, will grow increasingly intolerant of military intrusions, American officers said.

“The man in the street will want to know why we need to continue with all these exercises if there’s no problem” with the Soviets, said Galvin.

Galvin has recommended to the Pentagon that U.S. forces in Europe scale back future field operations and increasingly rely on mechanical simulators, computer war games and teleconferences. Field officers complain that while these techniques are cleaner, cheaper and less dangerous, they are no substitute for driving 60-ton tanks, flying Mach-2 aircraft and firing live ammunition.

Galvin also expects an increased emphasis on surveillance of Warsaw Pact nations and more time and manpower devoted to verification of arms control agreements.

With smaller forces on the ground in Europe, he says, NATO will need more warning of any mobilization by the Soviets or their allies so that it can move reinforcements into place. And disarmament treaties now being negotiated will contain complex verification provisions requiring thousands of monitors to count tanks, inspect equipment depots and observe field exercises.