Don't Be the Incident

Berlin, 1960. The Cold War is already dangerous. The Wall does not exist yet.

Twenty-two-year-old Army MP Vern Kessler arrives in West Berlin for a three-year tour with one overriding rule: don't be the incident.

His job is supposed to be simple-patrol the American sector, keep soldiers out of trouble, watch the border, and make sure nothing happens that might give the Soviets an excuse to turn a divided city into a battlefield.

Back home, Vern's new wife, Lorna, is waiting to join him.

Then, on August 13, 1961, Berlin changes overnight.

Barbed wire cuts streets in half. Families are separated. Windows are bricked shut. Escape attempts become acts of desperation, and the invisible boundary Vern has been policing becomes the Berlin Wall. Plans for Lorna to come to Germany collapse, leaving their young marriage to survive through blue envelopes, expensive telephone calls, and promises that become harder to keep.

As tensions rise-from the tanks facing one another at Checkpoint Charlie to the death of Peter Fechter and President Kennedy's historic visit-Vern discovers that the most difficult part of his duty is not facing an enemy.

It is standing still.

Again and again, he is asked to obey orders that are strategically necessary and personally unbearable. The restraint that may prevent a war can also mean watching helplessly while someone suffers only yards away.

And eventually, one man on the other side of the Wall asks Vern for help.

Helping him could destroy Vern's career, endanger others, and create exactly the international incident he has spent three years preventing.

Doing nothing may cost him something greater.

Don't Be the Incident is a character-driven Cold War historical novel about duty, conscience, marriage, friendship, and the ordinary soldiers who stood at one of the most dangerous borders in the world-knowing that sometimes the safest thing to do and the right thing to do were not the same