Brian Swale wrote:
> Hi all
> Chuck wrote
>
>>The KGB knew exactly who I was and what I did as
>>
>>>they let me know unmistakeably one day in Paris while I was on leave
>>>from Germany. What they didn't know was how well I did it.
>
>
> Now that sounds like a story worth telling !
>
> Will you risk the wrath of List-mum by going OT and telling us?
--------------------------------------------------
OK, I forgot that Piers also asked the same. I'll tell a brief version.
The time is 1963, near the peak of the cold war. Germany is a
monitoring station for all sorts of soviet bloc radio traffic. The US
Air Force monitors military air traffic and trains linguists in all the
various languages used in the Soviet Union. I had been sent to Syracuse
University for a year to be taught Polish.
During the summer of '63 I took a short leave to Paris with a group of
my co-workers. We went by train. There were three Russian linguists, a
Czech linguist and me with Polish. For all of this supposed linguistic
ability, however, not one of us spoke a word of French.
On the return trip, we were standing in the middle of a Paris train
station surrounded by great throngs of people. We were confused about
which train to catch and were all standing in a group trying to decipher
the signs. I'm sure we looked obviously befuddled.
Seemingly out of nowhere suddenly appeared before us a short and rotund
guy dressed in what I took to be a French train mechanic's work uniform.
He looked at each of us in turn and said to each of us in our
respective languages (Polish, Russian, Czech); "Your train is on track
17" and then disappeared into the crowd as quickly as he had appeared.
We stood there for several minutes absolutely dumbfounded not quite
believing what we had just heard.
When we returned we reported the incident and were told not to worry
about it since "It happens all the time". When it comes to the
importance of intelligence gathering agents I was probably the lowest of
the low. It has always astounded me that the KGB spent enough on their
own intelligence work to be able to keep track of little ol' me and my
whereabouts. No doubt that's part of the reason the USSR is no more. I
think they spent themselves into the ground.
OK, back to regular OT subjects.
Chuck Norcutt
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