BERLIN 20TH ANNIVERSARY: Bogle Witnessed Fall Of Wall

BENTONVILLE RESIDENT RECOUNTS WATCHING HISTORIC BERLIN DEMOLITION

By Jeff Mores

Posted: November 10, 2009 at 4:16 a.m.

David Frank Dempsey
David Bogle of Bentonville talks Monday about being in Berlin and chiseling souvenirs from the Berlin Wall when it came down Nov. 9, 1989.

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BENTONVILLE — One of the most popular hits on Internet search engines around the world Monday was “Berlin Wall.” But on this, the 20th anniversary of the opening and eventual falling of the Berlin Wall, Bentonville’s David Bogle didn’t need historical accounts to recount the day.

Like many who have since purchased pieces of the famed wall segregated Berlin from 1961 to 1989, Bogle is able to hold four pieces of shattered history in his own hands. Only Bogle didn’t purchase his. He chiseled one of them off the standing Berlin Wall mere hours before the bulldozers rolled in. And he picked up the other three after watching a section of the wall tumble in.

“This one here, I chiseled myself,” Bogle explained Monday. “I can remember running up to the wall and chiseling as fast as I could, then running back to the safe zone every time the guard came our way. We kept going back and forth, like a lot of other people. And I tell you, it was really difficult getting a piece off. The other pieces I have are bigger, but this little one means the most to me because I actually chiseled it off the wall myself.”

When the announcement was made East Germany was lifting travel restrictions — a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism in Europe — Bogle, then 37, happened to be in London working as a volunteer tour guide. Sensing the significance of the news that the Berlin Wall would soon fall, Bogle caught a fl ight to Paris and hopped on a train hoping to end up somewhere near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

He wasn’t sure if he’d make it there or in time for the collapse of the wall, but after a series of train connections he was standing in sight of the enormous barrier between East and West Berlin.

“I’ve traveled the world and done a lot of things in my life, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been a part of anything so world-changing as this event,” Bogle remembered.

The Bornholmer Strasse bridge was the fi rst crossing to open Nov. 9. Bogle does not recall if he arrived Nov. 9 or Nov. 10, but he was in Berlin for four days and saw what history books around the world have attempted to recount since.

“People were crossing from the East to the West at a few checkpoints, I think before I got there, but I remember them rolling in these big lights at night and shining them on the wall,” Bogle said. “They brought in the bulldozers and that’s where the wall started coming down — at least the section of it I saw fall.

“I kind of stood off to the side, watching this huge mass of people moving over to the West side,” Bogle said. “I just stood and watched for hours. The German people were very emotional about what was occurring. It’s difficult to describe, but I could just feel the signifi cance of what was happening around me. This was history. So many people’s lives were changed.”

Prior to the falling of the Berlin Wall, the scene was anything but joyous. The wall featured guard towers in and around a barrier area known as the “death strip.” Photographs of family members separated when the wall went up, waving to each other from perches on either side, have been circulated through the years. And stories of the approximately 5,000 successful escapes, as well as those who were shot by guards for attempting to do so, are still told.

Standing at the wall and touching it hours before the line between East and West finally fell was an experience Bogle will never forget.

“You don’t forget something like that,” Bogle said, moving his hand over the surface of the small piece he chipped from the wall himself. “I remember being there and the realization of how long the wall actually was. It just kept going and going. I’ll never forget that visual of the wall actually crumbling and opening up.”

Bogle, who returned to the site two years later, keeps the remnants under lock and key.

“That whole area is completely transformed,” Bogle said. “It’s difficult to imagine it being the way it was.”

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