Republicans greatest praise of Ronald Reagan is that he ended the Cold War.

[underpants]

11. Yes + the Poles (as noted above) + their system + Gorbachev (he was the tipping point)

I was in Germany from 90-93 in the Army. There was a ex-GI who stayed and married a German woman (nice people) and got a job working on the roads. His story of that night is close to yours. There was road work being done on a road that literally touched the wall. The workers left all their hand tools at the site (as Germans often do) at the end of the day. On the same road there were several bars. Basically pubs - everyone hits them after dinner or for dinner. Later in the night several drunks stumbled out and saw the tools and basically one of them said, "F^(# it!!" and started pic axing ....others said "Hell Yeah" ....and so on.

As you stated about the guard this situation was that the police who arrived hesitated or weren't sure what to do. The bars kept emptying and people kept trading the tools around. It got out of hand (in a good way) and down it came. That was his story anyway. He said that the crane operators were part of the work crew which would make sense. People don't typically just jump in those things and figure out how to operate them.