Pompeo meets US troops, German leaders to start 2-day visit

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with American troops in southern Germany on Thursday, starting a trip based around the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in an area where he served as an Army officer during the Cold War.

Pompeo, who served as a tank platoon leader on the border with Czechoslovakia and East Germany in the 1980s, chatted with troops at the Grafenwoehr training area and nearby Vilseck and attended a live-fire exercise before heading north to meet up with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in the town of Moedlareuth.

During the Cold War, Moedlareuth was split down the middle by the border between East and West Germany, with the southern part in Bavaria and the northern part in Thuringia, a partition that gave rise to its nickname, "Little Berlin."
He will also unveil a statue of Ronald Reagan on an upper-level terrace of the U.S. Embassy, overlooking the site in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate where the Berlin Wall once stood and the former president gave his famous 1987 speech beseeching then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "open this gate" and "tear down this wall."