some took more unusual routes. One of the most spectacular was the escape in September 1979 of eight people from two families in a home-made hot-air balloon. Their flight involved an ascent to more than before landing near the West German town of Naila. Other escapees relied more on physical strength and endurance. An escapee in 1987 used meat hooks to scale the fences, while in 1971 a doctor swam across the Baltic Sea from Rostock almost to the Danish island of Lolland, before he was picked up by a West German yacht. Another escapee used an air mattress to escape across the Baltic in 1987. Mass escapes were rare. One of the few that succeeded took place on 2 October 1961, when 53 people from the border village of Böseckendorf – a quarter of the village's population – escaped en masse, followed by another 13 inhabitants in February 1963. An unusual mass escape occurred in September 1964 when 14 East Germans, including eleven children, were smuggled across the border in a refrigerated truck. They were able to escape detection by being concealed under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs being transported to the West. The traffic was not one-way; thousands of people migrated each year from West Germany to the east, motivated by reasons such as marital problems, family estrangement and homesickness. A number of Allied military personnel, including British, French, German and United States troops, also defected. By the end of the Cold War, as many as 300 United States citizens were thought to have defected across the Iron Curtain for a variety of reasons – whether to escape criminal charges, for political reasons or because (as the St. Petersburg Times put it) "girl-hungry GI's [were tempted] with seductive sirens, who usually desert the love-lorn soldier once he is across the border." The fate of such defectors varied considerably. Some were sent straight to labour camps on charges of espionage. Others committed suicide, while a few were able to find wives and work on the eastern side of the border. Order to fire From 1945 onwards, unauthorised crossers of the inner German border risked being shot by Soviet or East German guards. The use of deadly force was termed the Schießbefehl ("order to fire" or "command to shoot"). It was formally in force as early as 1948, when regulations concerning the use of firearms on the border were promulgated.