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BY JOHN CHAPPELL: Staff Writer

Retired Army Col. Vern Pike of Pinehurst will appear tonight on the Fox News Channel’s program “War Stories with Oliver North.”

Pike manned the famous Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War. His heroic action in a crisis averted a potential escalation from confrontation to conflict between East and West.

After World War II, Russia took the position that East Berlin was part of East Germany. The West insisted that the city was still subject to the Four Power Agreement and was conquered territory to be jointly administered by England, France, Russia and the United States, with each nation governing one sector of the former German capital.

Checkpoint Charlie was the crossing point between Western part of Berlin and the Soviet sector. In the fall of 1961, columns of black tanks rolled toward the checkpoint.

Pike, a young lieutenant, was on duty as part of a military police contingent whose duty was testing and teasing.

“It was the hotspot of the Cold War,” he said. “Our role was to be the tripwire. It was all a game, and we played games with them, establishing our access rights. We put those black armbands on, acted like Strassenmeisters, and swept down the highway to West Germany as fast as we could.”

Sending MPs into the Eastern sector to escort civilians provoked the tank response, according to Pike. Painting them black was just part of the game. There was no way to tell whose tanks they were, legal Soviet or illegal East German — an act of war.

“They had painted over the tanks,” he said. “They were all painted black, so we didn’t know if they were East German or Russian. General Clay was talking to my boss. General Clay said, ‘Whose tanks are they?’ My boss said, ‘Well, they look like Soviet T-54s, but we really don’t know; because they’re all painted over.’”

Gen. Lucius Clay ordered his commander to find out. Pike got the job.

“Well, the good lieutenant was told by the colonel, ‘Take my car and driver, and go into East Berlin and find out whose tanks they are,’” Pike said. “So, we went over East Berlin.”

The tank columns appeared to be deserted. Pike’s driver investigated.

“The driver got out of the vehicle,” Pike said. “He went to the back of the formation, and they were having like a briefing behind the lead tank.”

The two MPs examined the tanks closely. They looked at the crews, Pike said.

“ None of the uniforms had any insignia of rank or anything like that,” he said.

The tank crews wore nondescript uniforms. They could have been from any Soviet Bloc country, though the tanks appeared to Pike almost certainly to be Russian despite the black paint and complete absence of unit markings.

“They took all insignia of rank off their uniforms,” Pike said. “They were in black leather uniforms. The little black leather hats they wore were the typical, standard, normal, usual tanker helmets that the Warsaw Pact wore — Hungarians, Czechs, East Germans, Poles — but the T-54 tank was not yet in the inventory of the East German army. In 1961, that was the front-line tank of the Soviets.”

Pike figured there might be one way to find out.

“I climbed up inside the last tank of the column on the right,” he said. “I went down into the cupola, down into the driver’s compartment. There was Cyrillic script on the dashboard. The driver had left a Red Army newspaper, and I put it on my clipboard, climbed out of the tank, and said to the driver, ‘Lets go attend the briefing.’ In those days I could speak Russian.”

Pike and his driver ambled up to the briefing at the head of the tank columns.

“They were talking Russian,” Pike said. “The leader of the pack looked up, and he saw these two American MPs standing in the back of his formation. I don’t know what he said, but I said, ‘Lets get the hell out of here and go back to Checkpoint Charlie.’ So we went back, I reported to the colonel.”

With the newspaper, Pike delivered proof the tanks were Russian. His colonel handed over a telephone, instructing Pike to tell Clay what he’d done.

“He gave me the phone, and I told General Clay, I said, ‘Sir, they’re Soviet tanks,’” he said.

No war. Just another move in the game.