An Army deserter who spent 30 years in East Germany said Friday he was only there a few weeks before he realized he must try to escape that country's grim conditions and danger. ``I feel like I threw 30 years of my life away,'' Arnold Kephart, 53, said in an interview here at the home of his brother-in-law, Arlo Dunbar. Speaking with a heavy German accent, Kephart said the country he's returned to is ``a different world'' and he never thought he would see anything like the rapid liberalization of Eastern Europe. ``It was like you were locked up all the time. I never really ever felt at home,'' he said. As an Army private in 1959, Kephart wrecked an Army truck and, fearing punishment, fled to East Germany. While there, Kephart said, he had 14 or 15 jobs, married twice and had four children, including a son he brought back with him. When he returned to the United States last month, Kephart was arrested at the airport before upset relatives who had been waiting for the reunion. A week later, the Army granted him an other-than-honorable discharge. A deal for a television movie of Kephart's life has just been closed, according to his attorney, James Martin Davis. He wouldn't reveal details. Kephart, who earned his living as a truck driver in East Germany, said he regretted his spur-of-the-moment decision to go absent without leave a few weeks after settling in Schmalkalind, the town where he lived for 30 years. Travel restrictions were so tight that only two opportunities to escape come along before East Germany opened its borders last year. The first attempt came in 1973 or 1974, Kephart said. His first marriage _ which produced a daughter, Kitty _ had ended in divorce. Kephart said he met two men ``in a beer joint'' who asked him if he wanted to get out. ``Maybe we had too many beers, but this one said he knew where there was a hole in the fence,'' Kephart recalled. He and his companions set out. He said he doesn't remember where they were headed, except that it was out of town. One of the men was walking near the border about five minutes ahead of Kephart and the other man when Kephart heard a noise. ``We thought maybe he stepped on a mine,'' Kephart said. ``We just turned around and headed back to town. ``Two or three days later, I heard that they'd found a person on the border _ dead,'' Kephart said. ``There's no way that couldn't have been the guy we were with.'' Before the second attempt 1975, Kephart drank ``enough beer to get my courage up and so I'd have an excuse if I got caught,'' he said. Kephart said three guards grabbed him as he approached the border, beat him, and sent him back to town. ``After that, I didn't think about trying the border again,'' he said. He met his second wife, Brigitte, a year after he was beaten. She is the mother of Frankie, now 12 and in the United States with his father, and Kephart's 8-year-old twin daughters, Katharina and Kathleen. The family lived in a small house, Kephart said. Their diet was meager: bread with some bologna-like meat for breakfast, soup and potatoes for lunch. Dinner was a reprise of breakfast, he said. ``You could seldom get eggs,'' said Kephart, who added that he is enjoying foods he sorely missed in East Germany. ``I always loved chili,'' he said. ``And pork and beans. They just don't have anything like that over there.''
