8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Original Monterey Mary at the Berlin tunnel, July 6, 2009
This review is from: Voices Under Berlin: The Tale Of A Monterey Mary (Paperback)
I am conflicted about reviewing VOICES UNDER BERLIN.
Author T.H.E. Hill has competently written an amusing story of the spy business from his personal experience as a Russian speaking linguist in Berlin in the 1970s. This was twenty years after the discovery of the celebrated and infamous Berlin spy tunnel of 1955-56. He presumably uses the tunnel operation and that time frame to give his narrative a better known historical background. I applaud his imagination and competence in listening in to Soviet phone conversations and understanding the significance of what he was hearing. Not all translators are able to "hear between the lines" as his hero Kevin was able to do. I'm confident that Hill himself is as competent as his highly skilled, imagined Kevin.
In mid-June 2009, Hill contacted me about having just learned of my personal participation at the 1955-56 tunnel site from Colonel Robert T. Browne's recent manuscript EXPERIENCES WITH THE CIA'S 1950'S BERLIN SPY TUNNEL. Browne was assigned to the Washington, D.C. side of the project, which was code named Project Stopwatch Gold, and had asked me to add my story as an appendix to his, which I was pleased to do. Browne had learned of my involvement this past March 2009 after becoming aware of my 2005 Amazon review of British historian David Stafford's 2002 documentary of the British side of the project, titled SPIES BENEATH BERLIN. Hill informed me that he was sending a complimentary copy of his VOICES and hoped I'd review it. Hill's title is clearly an echo of Stafford's.
While VOICES was entertaining and even fun at times (I did laugh some!), my conflict resulted from the cognitive dissonance of actually having been there at the time of Hill's story and being the only U.S. Army Russian-speaking linguist on site, which was much different from the multitude of U.S. Army linguists in Hill's story. Hill has had to remind me often that his story is fiction. I keep forgetting that, because it was close to what really happened! But not quite.
For example, Hill describes the white-knuckle event of snow melting atop the tunnel dig, which I personally witnessed. This was because the British engineers hadn't considered taking the heat out of the tunnel before the snow season, which would obviously and dramatically have revealed its location to all those above ground who might be watching. Hill places this event during the 1954 digging of the tunnel and before it was operational, but I was there when this event happened in October 1955. This was well after the tunnel was operational and could have blown the entire project. But it didn't.
I admit that Hill's ingenious, imagined solution of deploying pup tents to cover the bare strip pointing like an arrow to the warehouse was clever. However, the fact is that the operational compound did not cover all the territory of the bare strip. The bare strip was mostly in East German territory, which began at the east fence of the compound and thus was not available for U.S. Army bivouacking.
Another example was Hill's description of the dirt being taken from the tunnel and simply "dumped" into the huge cellar beneath the warehouse designed to contain it. When I first inspected the tunnel in October 1955, I noticed this dirt and remember chuckling to myself about its cleverness. No one had briefed me about this beforehand. It wasn't dumped, but rather stored in boxes neatly stacked as originally planned. When I pointed out this minor fact to him, Hill replied that had he known about it, he could have done more interesting things to the chapter called The Dead Man in the Tunnel.
Still another conflict was the nature of shifts and the method of processing the tapes. In 1955-56 we had no such developed procedures for verifying the information translated. I never knew who might review my output, but one incident stands out when the CIA Section Chief (the real boss) came to my desk to have me erase a section of a particular tape. Even though I was merely an enlisted man, I never reported to the Army officers or NCOs who were there as cover. My reports went directly to the CIA agents on site and my relationships with Agency people were always polite and respectful. There were two exceptions.
The first was when "Smitty" (Richard E. Smith), a fellow Monterey Mary from the same Army Language School (ALS) graduating class, called me on the telephone at Captain and Executive Officer Livingston's office using the name "Mr. Green". How he ever found me or knew to call that operation is still a mystery to me. I didn't have a clue as to who could be calling me until I recognized Smitty's voice speaking Russian and instinctively replied in kind. Livingston went white and began signaling frantically with gestures across his throat for me to get off the phone immediately. Instead of obeying his hysterical behavior, I began speaking stumbling Russian with a more college type American accent. That was even worse! Livingstone went ballistic and launched himself at the phone, cutting off the connection himself. It turns out that Smitty was himself under cover, knew nothing about my function, and thought by speaking Russian as "Mr. Green", I would get the clue to his situation. What a mess! To have anyone speaking Russian at that site was classified information. What a royal chewing out I got! Dumb! Very dumb!
The second exception was when Col. Helgestad called me to his office to read me the riot act for becoming a prima donna to certain enlisted men. All U.S. Army enlisted personnel besides me were there only in logistical and maintenance support and did not know anything about my role as a linguist. It turns out that at a rare point of physical and mental exhaustion, I had allowed myself to be sucked into a penny-ante poker game one night by several self-styled card sharks who thought they would bait and take me to the cleaners. It didn't take long to figure out their strategy and make beating them at their own game a high priority. I won well over $100 in a week by infuriating them with reverse psychology. This provoked them into a slur campaign to get me out of the operation. Helgestad threatened to send me home as a buck private if I didn't shape up. That's all it took for me to change tunes and I never played with those men again, despite their continuing taunts to recover their losses. Sweet revenge!
Then there was the Second John that came to memory when reading of Hill's description of "Lt. Sheerluck". My Lieutenant once boasted to me directly and with a sly smirk that he and the other officers had orders not to let certain personnel--namely me and the other linguists--be taken, if the tunnel were ever discovered. I hated this guy for his stupidity and steered clear of him from then on.
What motivated me to review Hill's book was his desire to provide families of silent Cold-War ex-spooks with a reference story for their posterity when and if they might ask "Grandpa, what did you do during the Cold War?" This rationale hooked and enabled me to make it through his clever, well-crafted fiction, despite the differences between it and the reality of my life in the Berlin Tunnel. Hill's Kevin uncannily reminds me of myself as being highly focused and motivated with a natural ear for the language, when compared to the other seasoned CIA and SIS agents on site who were not as motivated.
It occurred to me only in writing this review that I was not only the ORIGINAL "Monterey Mary" at the Berlin Tunnel site, but the ONLY ONE during its entire operational life! I am going to buy a boatload of Hill's book to send copies to my family, friends and various acquaintances, IF I CAN GET HIM TO AUTOGRAPH THEM! ;-)
Eugene N. Kovalenko, Ph. D.
Los Alamos, NM
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Relevant for today, too, February 16, 2008
This review is from: Voices Under Berlin: The Tale Of A Monterey Mary (Paperback)
This historical spy novel weaves an interesting fictionalized plot into an important event of the Cold War - the Berlin spy tunnel. The main character is an endearing, eccentric genius who gives the story a feeling of authenticity - the sort of nerdy person seemingly necessary for the success of a serious technical intelligence operation. "Voices" is also the story of two types of managers, 1) those with the smarts and dedication needed to make an operation work, and 2) self-serving careerists and incompetents who make it difficult.
There are some clever puns and plays on names in several languages; for example Gabbie (Gabi) and Sgt Makaronshchik ("Lifer"). For 99% of readers who are not acquainted with the jargon used by GIs and intelligence people in Berlin during the occupation era the author provides a useful guide to English, Russian and German terms and acronyms. The book does a nice job of capturing the flavor of Berlin during the spy-infested period before the Wall.
If you enjoyed the treatment of the Berlin Tunnel in "Battleground Berlin" and wonder what it must have taken to make it successful, you will enjoy this story. The hero has super language skills, and just as importantly, the requisite deep knowledge of the Soviet military and political system - the sort of person with skills needed to win the Cold War. And come to think of it, it's what the country needs to win the War on Terror: more dedicated experts, which is what makes the book relevant for today. "Voices under Berlin" is a good read. You won't be able to put it down.
Terry in Orange Beach, Alabama
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Authentic Spy Story, June 4, 2008
This review is from: Voices Under Berlin: The Tale Of A Monterey Mary (Paperback)
T.H.E. Hill's first novel, Voices Under Berlin, depicts the absurdities of military protocol during the U.S. military's spy tunnel operation under Berlin in the mid-1950s. Hill, himself a veteran of Field Station Berlin and compiler of six non-fiction army booklets covering this "early cold war" occupation of Berlin, writes with a convincing sense of authenticity and, through the use of photographs of people and places depicted in the novel, gives the impression that this story is closely based on real events.
Kevin, a military translator, comes across as the one competent and qualified character amidst a pack of bureaucrats and slackers, his translation skills proving key to preparing accurate transcipts of the wiretapped conversations of the East Germans and Russians. But when the transcripts begin to reveal that the Russians are using a female spy to gather intelligence from an American boyfriend, Kevin's loyalty is called into question as the female spy bears a striking resemblance to his German girlfriend, Gabbie.
Unlike traditional spy fiction, Voices Under Berlin relies not on a character villain or white-knuckle plot to entertain. The twin villains here are bureaucracy and incompetence, and Hill exposes the danger they pose to military operations through a series of often-humorous incidents. While this episodic approach to plotting is creative and entertaining at times, a number of the chapters do little to advance the story line. I also found myself bogged down in places by military jargon and inside jokes, although these touches might enhance the novel's appeal for Field Station Berlin Veterans and others with a military background. The author's use of the third-person omniscient viewpoint also made it difficult for me to forge a strong bond with Kevin or the supporting cast.
Hill writes well, and there is a lot of rich detail and historical material to be found here. I just wish that the author had chosen a voice that spoke more directly to me and a plot that created a stronger sense of danger and suspense.
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