Stop Train 349

September 9, 2014 1:14 PM

On the evening of Wednesday, November 22, 1961, a US Army "Duty Train" left Berlin for West Germany, traveling through Soviet-occupied East Germany, when a young East German, in a bid to escape, jumped aboard the train when it slowed for a curve, and was let aboard. The incident was eventually dramatized as a film called Stop Train 349, or Incident at Marienborn.
posted by pjern (10 comments total)

Interesting life that of one Col. Norbert Grabowski, then a lieutenant in charge of the train who initially refused to hand over the man to the Russians.
posted by jsavimbi at 1:27 PM on September 9, 2014

Glad to see this from jsavimbi's link to Grabowski's obit in the WaPo.

In 1998, he was reunited with the refugee when a German filmmaker made a documentary about the incident. The refugee served two years in prison and then lived quietly in East Germany until the communist regime fell in 1989.
posted by 724A at 1:34 PM on September 9, 2014

Oh, I thought this was Incident at Marienbad, where he thinks he jumps on the train every year.
posted by No Robots at 2:16 PM on September 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

The military liaison missions themselves are quite interesting.
posted by kiltedtaco at 2:26 PM on September 9, 2014

The military liaison missions themselves are quite interesting.

When we did them right, they weren't.
posted by pjern at 2:31 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

When I was stationed with the US Army in Germany, we were trained to do specific things to limit the effectiveness of Soviet MLMs observing US military activity - box them in on the highway if they drove into a US convoy, for example.
posted by me & my monkey at 2:42 PM on September 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

^ ('84-'87)
posted by me & my monkey at 2:42 PM on September 9, 2014

When I was stationed with the US Army in Germany, we were trained to do specific things to limit the effectiveness of Soviet MLMs observing US military activity - box them in on the highway if they drove into a US convoy, for example.

I am now trying to wrap my head around the concept of Soviet Multi-Level Marketing and how you would defend against it.
posted by N-stoff at 8:34 PM on September 9, 2014

My Dad was a young US Army Captain in the 60's and at one time, he rode around Germany in a train with a French and British counterpart, all three in uniform.

Mind you, they didn't do anything. The real point of this exercise was to see how the Soviets would react to this seemingly random trip.
posted by Dagobert at 7:25 AM on September 10, 2014

I am now trying to wrap my head around the concept of Soviet Multi-Level Marketing and how you would defend against it.

[insert IN SOVIET RUSSIA X MARKETS X joke here]
posted by me & my monkey at 6:31 PM on September 10, 2014