British Frontier Service

Additional regional liaison offices were located in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Helmstedt, near the main border crossing (Checkpoint Alpha) on the Hanover-Berlin autobahn.

Its role changed again in 1972 following the signature of the Treaty on the Basis of Relations between East and West Germany, when the two states agreed to recognise each other.

The British government took the view at this point that the United Kingdom was no longer responsible for the inner German border and considered eliminating the BFS altogether.

Its officers were called to the scene of border incidents or unusual activity to defuse disputes and provide an independent British view of situations.

Although the BAOR did not patrol the much shorter northern sector from Lübeck to Lauenburg, the BFS filled the gap with occasional "visits".

[9] It presented a somewhat odd appearance, described by The Times as "delightful, perhaps unique": With its fleet of patrol cars, carrying built-in radio telephones and Union Jack badges, and its military language ("That's the drill, Arthur"), the BFS brings to mind some imperial field force of the 1880s, nearer-flung than of yore, for whose members, perhaps, the Elbe is a faint substitute for the Nile, the Zambezi or the Irrawaddy.

Jack Owen, a BFS officer and former Royal Marine, was awarded an MBE in 1963 following a tense incident at Bohldamm near Lüchow in Lower Saxony.

An overgrown cobbled footbridge crossed the stream but was blocked by the East Germans with a movable barbed wire trestle barrier situated at the far end of the bridge.

Owen called the East Germans' bluff by walking onto the bridge with two British soldiers and carrying the trestle back to the eastern side of the stream.

[10][11] Tommy Jones, a former member of the Royal Military Police special investigations branch, became well known as a guide for Western journalists and visitors to the inner German border.

"[12] Jones arrived in Germany in 1945 during the British advance to the Elbe in the closing months of the Second World War and remained there for the next 45 years.