My departed longtime friend and fellow Villager columnist Mort Marks and I used to have long discussions on World War ll. He was an infantry survivor of the Battle of The Bulge, Hitler’s last gasp attempt to turn the tide of war back against the U.S. forces. He failed and General Patton’s forces raced to the Rhine. We had won the war.
Mort told me about meeting the Russian troops that moved forward and captured Berlin. “We got along famously,” he said, “They had vodka and we had cigarettes.”
Hitler made one of his biggest mistakes of his infamous leadership of Germany when he invaded the USSR. They burned, killed, raped, and reached the Volga river across from Stalingrad, but were never to take the famous city that was under siege for years. The residents boiled and ate shoe leather to survive, millions died.
Had Hitler invaded England, rather than attacking the vast Soviet empire, world history might have been quite different. Japan attacking Pearl Harbor brought America into the war against Japan and Germany. The Japanese attack brought allied forces to the aid of the British empire resulting in the Normandy invasion and the ultimate demise of the Nazi regime.
We were allies with the Soviets, they were tough as nails and fierce soldiers. It wasn’t long before the U.S. and the Soviets were dividing up Germany and we had the allies in West Germany and the Russians holding East Germany walling it off from the West. It wasn’t until American President Ronald Reagan spoke tough to Russian president Gorbachev telling him, “tear down that wall,” and he did. The Soviet empire was bankrupt and dissolved into different states with Russia becoming the center of the communist government. The prized Russian breadbasket Ukraine formed a new state, still the center of conflict with Russia today.
It was in 1975 that I was selected to join 12 other American journalists in the first, and last, exchange of American journalists to the Soviet Union. The war in Vietnam was still ongoing and we were losing. The Russians would soon take over Vietnam with the North Vietnam leaders. We lost the war, 50,000 Americans were killed in action and we withdrew in shame. Hard to explain why we were ever there in the first place. I was in the military in 1960-61 when the war first began. In my Armor class of AOB-3, four officers were ordered to Vietnam as advisors. I was assigned to USATCA where I trained tank crews on gunnery as a range officer, never to see combat. Vietnam jungles were a terrible place for tanks.
Turning back the pages to Craig in 1975, the Chamber of Commerce invited Linden Blue, son of State Treasurer Virginia Blue, to speak to the annual Chamber banquet. He was a leading Denver businessman and at that time, later becoming CEO of the Piper Aircraft factory located in Wichita, Kansas. His mother was born in nearby Meeker and had risen to State political fame as a prominent elected office holder.
During his speech he told of being an exchange businessman to the Soviet Union through an organization called “The American Council of Young Political Leaders,” a bipartisan group sponsored by the state department. The mission was to send promising young political leaders on worldwide political exchange programs. (I was mayor of Craig at the time and publishing the local newspaper.)
During his speech he mentioned that the state department was planning to have an upcoming exchange journalist trip with the Soviets. I applied, he assisted me, and I was accepted as one of two journalists from the West, one from the Arizona Republic and myself from The Craig Daily Press. We joined with the likes of The Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Maine Bangor-Gazette, and other major eastern metropolitan daily newspaper representatives. There were nine men and four women on the six-week adventure. It was a life-changing experience that has intrigued me for decades.
Prior to debarking in late September, we spent four days at the state department, being briefed on history, diplomacy, and the dangers of being in Russia. Among the minefields was not to exchange money – that was illegal. The Russians were desperate for U.S. dollars to spend in their Barioskas stores that only sold scarce items like cokes to tourists. This advice and knowledge proved to be very valuable as we were approached often in Red Square to sell dollars and also to buy books, also illegal.
First Stop Was London:
To be continued: