PART III

  My postwar years of military service in France
 

In July of 1947 I left my comfortable lodging and interesting position in Wiesbaden, Germany for a new challenge in Paris, France. I was already fairly fluent in the French language and was doubly happy to have the opportunity to really improve it by a complete immersion. But my greatest joy was that I was able to court the lady of my heart, Mary, who had left her job in Wiesbaden for a new one in Paris. She became my beautiful, beloved wife a year later.

My new job was situated on Orly airport just south of the city. I immediately noticed that since my visit two years earlier additional runways had been built as well as a modest new terminal building. The Orly airport was already rapidly becoming one of the busiest European air terminals. The part of the air base attributed to the US Air Force consisted of temporary World War 2 type military structures. The civilian air terminal used by Air France, TWA, Panam, etc. was a medium size building recently constructed. Today, fifty five years later, my reasonable Orly airport of yore is unrecognizable. It now covers the entire area and is one of the busiest European airports and the noise level has become a political and social problem.

 

The commanding officer of the small US Air Force unit based on the small area allotted to us by the French airport authorities was Lt Colonel Harry Willard. The unit consisted of about a hundred men, of which fifteen were officers. At that time I was serving in the grade of captain and the married men were not yet authorized to bring their families. This regulation was rescinded in early 1948. The mess was joint for officers and enlisted men but we had a room with a bar which served as our officers club.

It was there that at least once a week, before the gradual arrival of the wives and families, we spend memorable evenings playing poker. Since it was limited to officers and gentlemen, without card sharks, in the long run there were neither winners nor losers, even among the bluffers. After the arrival of colonel Willard's wife and children, my wife and I helped them in many ways and we became good friends, a friendship which lasted a lifetime. In 1949 Willard was transferred to the airport at Athens, Greece. We were able to continue our close friendship in 1953-54 when we were living in the Bronx and the Willards were living on Michel Air Force Base on Long Island.

During the years 1956-1959 I was still serving on Orly field and the Willards were living in Fontainbleau and we were able to exchange visits often. In 1964 he was stationed at an American air base near Tokyo, Japan where I spent a few weeks supervising the installation of a computer system similar to the one I had installed on our base at High Wycomb west of London in England. I was able to enjoy several friendly rounds of golf on a course next to the base. This great sport, along with american baseball have become favorite sports in modern Japan. Colonel Willard and I both retired from active service in 1968. In 1970, Mary and I spent a few days with them in their new home on the Gulf of Mexico near the city of Naples. We had several other close friendships with Air Force colleagues which lasted a lifetime. Relationships which I later found rarely develop in the civilian commercial and industrial careers. As a military officer, you are a member of a large well organized and united family which cares for its members.

 

Like all young Americans (and French) my most important wish was to be able to own an american automobile. Like most important manufactured items just after the war in late 1940's and early 1950's, the supply was limited. In France many items were still rationed.

My first vehicle was a command car which I was able to buy through the army surplus system. It was a monster but at least I had wheels and I even made a trip as far as Luxemburg with it in spite of engine cooling problems. My second automobile was a prewar Plymouth. Soon after that acquisition I won the right in the military lottery to buy a new american automobile.

So in early 1948 I returned to Wiesbaden to pick up my new Oldsmobile. I drove it quite often on trips from Paris to Germany. I remember well that in those years after six or eight in the evening there was almost no traffic on the french national roads. Difficult to imagine that traffic jams did not exist in Paris, except when the communist party and the CGT, their labor union, organized anti-american demonstrations on the streets of Paris. In the 1950's the communist party and the communist labor union, the CGT, were the strongest political parties in France with 29% of the votes during political elections. It was common knowledge that the party and the union were financed by the USSR!

 

The French, unlike the Germans, had not as yet constructed their super highways. Hitler had and had also begun manufacturing his world renown Volkswagon and had quickly begun the construction of a modern mobile army (the Bundeswehr) and a modern air Force (the Luftwaffe). Hitler lost the war but after the war the Volkswagon conquered the world. Something Hitler even with his mighty tanks and modern Air Force was unable to do! It took Hitler's armies only eight months and a half (3 October 1939 - 17 Juin 18) to bring France to her knees and to seriously menace Great Britain.

 

Several months after my arrival at Orly field for my new assignment, young brother Stanley landed at Rouen, France as a second officer on a liberty ship which was delivering a load of wheat. We had not seen each other since our 1945 encounter in Naples, Italy. I was able to visit with him. We had time to enjoy a delicious dinner at a local restaurant and he brought me up to date on his latest adventures. The most interesting was about his unplanned prolonged trip around South America.

They had loaded a cargo of nitrate in a small port in Chili and sailed north to pass through the Panama canal. There the authorities refused to let them pass because of the dangerous nitrate cargo. They were obliged to make the long detour around the entire continent. Luckily it was summertime in the southern hemisphere and the passage around Cap Horn was not very stormy. Before his ship left Rouen he smuggled off his typewriter for which I was grateful since I was beginning to do a lot of translations. I still have that typewriter but have not used it for many years. I now use a mini computer, the development of which I was intimately involved as we shall see later!

 

As for my brother Henry, after our encounter in the Apennins we lost contact for several years except for a few letters. He continued his career in the US Air Force as a radar specialist. In 1948 he married and his only daughter, Linda, was born in 1950. My wife and I met Linda and her mother for the first time in the summer of 1953 in Washington D.C. where I was on special assignment for several months. They were on the way to join Henry who was stationed at a radar site on the snowy island of Hokkaido in northern Japan.

Our next encounter occurred in 1956 at our residence in St Cloud, France. The three of them had driven from Zarragossa, Spain where brother Henry was stationed at a US Air Force radar site. In 1960 I was stationed on Scott Air Force Base, Illinois with MATS headquarters, when I received an urgent telephone call from Henry, who was stationed at a radar sight in northern Canada, to inform me of the sudden death of his dear wife due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Henry sent his daughter to live with her grandmother in Florida until he finished his assignment in Canada. Henry remarried a few years later and when he retired from the US Air Force he settled in Homestead, Florida. Over the years during my many travels I stopped by to visit with them. I remember that at the age of ten Linda loved to climb trees and insisted that I climb with her. As a teen she played the piano well and we spent hours singing all the old favourite songs of my youth.

 

The director of Orly airport during my long years of service there in the 1950's was Jacques Charbonnier. He quickly became a sincere friend. We were both fervent skiers and each winter for several winters we spent ten days in the french Alps enjoying this terrific sport. My wife and niece were not skiers but they enjoyed descending some of the slopes with us on a sled. In the 1940'S and 1950's the ski trails were relatively free of breakneck skiers so the ladies could use their sled. I was a prudent skier but our friend Jacques liked to attack the most difficult slopes.

Of course, one day the inevitable happened. He suffered a badly broken leg and since he was living as a bachelor and had nobody to care for him, he recuperated for several weeks with us in our apartment in Paris. His fiancée came to visit rather frequently. They married a year later and a year after their first child, a boy, was born. Unfortunately they did not live happily ever after. Several years later, the three were killed when his private plane crashed in Africa.

The Berlin blockade and the cold war

I was scheduled to remain on my assignment at Orly field for a year or two but the postwar geopolitical events were stronger than my vague plans and I remained in Europe on a variety of assignments until 1958. During this period I was able to become really fluent in the french language and to get to know France and the French. These were also the most dangerous years of the so called Cold War between the western powers and the USSR. The aggressive and menacing actions of the communist world, directly and openly financed and supported by the USSR, lasted for 45 years (1945-1990). The confrontation was at its worst between 1948 and 1953 the year of the death of Marshal Stalin. Berlin, the capital city of Germany was over fifty percent destroyed by the american bombings and the soviet tanks.

 

At the end of the war in May of 1945, Berlin was divided into four sectors: American, British, French and Soviet. In 1948 the three allied sectors were unified and the slow reconstruction of West Germany began. But Berlin was surrounded by Soviet occupied East Germany, thus encircled by the Red Army. The only means of access we the allies had was by a highway through the Soviet zone or by a unique air corridor permitted by the Soviets. These two routes were the only ones we could use to supply our troops and the Berliners, for there was a dramatic shortage of food and other essentials. As a retaliation for the union of the three allied sectors, the Soviets closed the access by road. Thus the only means of supplying our forces and the german population was by using the still authorized air corridor.

Once again the clouds of a possible war blackened the horizon. To deliver supplies to Berlin all the transport aircraft available to the allied military were used to carry all sorts of goods, including coal. The blockade and the air bridge lasted for almost a year before the Soviets agreed to lift their blockade. At this point the Soviets and their communist installed East Germany government began to build the infamous wall separating East and West Germany. The ancient Chinese built a wall to keep out the barbarians. The communists built a wall to prevent the barbarians from escaping! A strange strange world we live in indeed. It was in 1962 that president Kennedy made his famous declaration during his visit to Berlin: "Ich bin ein Berliner!" (I am a Berliner!). The wall was not demolished until forty years later by the East and West Germans themselves after the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Empire in 1991. A proof that hope eternal still resides in the human breast and that democracy and a free society can prevail.

 

The extremely agressive cold war actions of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the other communist countries, continued after the Berlin crisis. The hot war came again in 1950 when the troops of communist North Korea invaded South Korea protected by the United Nations. The North Koreans were openly supported by the new communist China of Mao Zedong. The Northern army was stopped only after the intervention of the United Nations troops, principally Americain, commanded by the flamboyant General MacArthur. At the same time the US and our european allies were confronted with the agressive and warlike actions of the USSR under absolute dictator Stalin.

Thus I remained in Europe instead of joining our efforts in the Far East. I visited Korea several times after the end of the war. The first time was in 1958, eight years after the end of the korean war, with an Air Force inspection team. I noticed that the country had not yet shown signs of recovery from the devastating war and that it was still essentially an agricultural country. Several decades later South Korea became a modern industrialized nation able to compete in the world market with its modern electronics and even in heavy industry such as automobile and ship building. But to insure peace in the area and prevent an agression by the North Koreans, we, the United States of America, still have over 37000 troops stationned in South Korea and the North Koreans are still living under an oppressive communist military dictatorship, building an atomic bomb while 50% of its people are starving.

 

In April of 1949, the allies signed a new treaty of alliance to counter the Soviet hostility and aggressiveness: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The original treaty was signed by twelve nations. The political organization, NATO, was installed in a new building in Paris. The military structure, SHAPE, (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) was hastily installed in the western suburb named Roqueincourt. General Ike Eisenhower was named the first commander. His official aircraft was parked on the Orly airport where I was stationed as chief of the American meteorological service. I got to know his aircraft crew and his secretary who called me frequently to checkup on the weather for his weekly golf game or a garden party.

On rare occasions he would make the call personally, but he never invited me to join him in his favorite sport, a game of golf!. Since the so-called cold war was extremely hot during the late nineteen forties and early fifties, SHAPE had a wartime headquarters deep underground in former sandstone quarries under the forest of St Germain west of Paris. Exercises simulating a hot war were held periodically in which I served as the Meteorological specialist.

 

My first landing and visit at Paris Orly airport was on the 5th of May 1945. I flew there from Florence, Italy on the C-47 transporting the commanding General of the 15th Air Force to participate in the official ceremonies of the German capitulation. I spent two days lost in the crowds in the center of Paris celebrating the end of the war. Little did I realize that I would soon be living there.

 

General Eisenhower's Aide de camp was major Vernon Walters, He would pass by my office for a weather briefing each time he accompanied the General on a flight. He spoke several languages, including impeccable French. His knowledge of the languages and the European countries served him well in his long military career. Like me, his first contact with the war was with the landings in North Africa. He was with the first wave which landed on the beach at Safi Morocco on 8 november 1942 as a young 2nd lieutenant.

I landed at Oran, Algeria a year later and he was already somewhere in Italy serving as an aide-de-camp to the chief of the allied forces, general Mark Clark. He finished his military carrier in 1976 as a two star Major General and served for several years as a deputy director of the CIA. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was organized during World War Two. Its primary mission was to serve as a secret intelligence agency, but after 1947 their existed very little official control of their activities so they quickly began to undertake many clandistine operations.

After the end of the Vietnam war in 1975 the CIA metamorphosed into a huge bureaucratic organisation with all the weakness which that implies. The proof of the their decadence and ineptitude was suddenly revealed by the attack and destruction of the World Trade towers in lower Manhattan in 2001 by the kamikazes of the infamous El QuaÐda terrorist organisation. This one act has changed the course of history, especially that of the United States of America. In the following two years we have undertaken two important and successful blitzkriegs: Afganisatan and Irak!

 

My relationship with the CIA reminds me of a spying incident which occured during my military service in Paris. I was one among the limited and strictly controlled number of officers who had the duty, the right and the privilege to transport military documents clasiffied Top Secret. This right is given only after a thorough investigation by the FBI. Sometimes when I traveled by military air transport from Paris to the USA, I was given the task of transporting documents classified Top Secret to be delivered to the proper authorities immediately upon arrival. I carried the documents in a small valise attached to my wrist. During this period, the CIA office and the communications center was situated in a blockhouse in the center of Paris not far from the Place de l'ƒtoile. One day the american military authorities arrested a young sergeant who worked in the Center. He was making copies of classified documents and was selling them to a soviet spy. He was tried and sentenced to a long term in prison. An interesting finale: the building was destroyed by a fire several years later.

 

General Ike Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces during the Normandy invasion on the 6th of June 1944, the first commander of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) and future president of the USA, liked to speak about his youth in the middle of Texas. In those times most of the farmers and ranchers were poor and the flamboyant Texas oil millionaires did not exist as yet. I recall one of his famous phrases: "With my brothers we were poor but we didn't know it." Ike is a typical example of true character of the United States of America.

A great nation, daughter of Europe but free and really democratic where a boy no matter how poor and with illiterate parents can hope to become president of the United States of America. That is one of the basic and important differences between the USA and most European nations with their medieval monarchist traditions and social classes. Ike was a poor farm boy from Texas who ended his military carrier as a four star general and retired on a Pennsylvania farm where he wrote his memoirs. I was a poor Pennsylvania farm boy who ended his military carrier as a colonel and retired on the French Rivera where I wrote my memoirs.

 

In December 1952 I was assigned to the American Embassy in Brussels Belgium. I joined the MAG (Military Aid Group) team and had recently been promoted to the grade of major. My job was to assist the commander of the military meteorological service to organize, to equip it and to train new personnel. We were at the hottest period of the cold war with the USSR, so it was of utmost importance that we assist our European allies weakened by the war to rearm and reorganize their military organisations.

The chief of the service was captain Frank Bastin. After the invasion (the Blitz Kriege) of Belgium by Hitler's tanks, 28 may-4 june 1940, Frank was able to escape to England via Spain and join the RAF. At the end of the war he continued his military career in the Belgian Air Force as commander of the meteorological service. We drove several times in his Jeep from Brussels to Wiesbaden on official business at the Air Force headquarters. I noticed that he liked to drive at dangerously high speed.

During the 1950s Frank came to Paris fairly frequently to attend meetings at SHAPE headquarters and sometimes stayed with us in our apartment at St Cloud which was just a few miles from the headquarters. During the following years we remained in contact.

 

In 1959 he prepared and commanded the Belgian Antarctic expedition. Several months after his return from the antarctic he was invited to accept a special award by the King of Belgium. On the return trip to his home he, his wife and young son were killed in a head-on collision with another automobile. I am convinced that his habit of driving at breakneck speed was the cause of the accident.

 

In the fall of 1954 I learned that my assignemnt at Paris airport named Orly was to last four years. Since finding an apartment for rent in Paris was almost impossible and the prices outrageous, my wife and I decided to buy an apartment in one of the southwestern suburbs of Paris thus facilitating my daily drive to my work at Orly airfield. With the help of a french friend we found one in the suburb of Saint Cloud. We bought it at a very reasonable price since it required complete renervation and reparation plus at that time the exchange rate was highly in favour of the US dollar. It was situated in a large late 19th century mansion which had been divided into six apartments.

We learned that it had been built for Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon the third after he had lost the war against Germany in 1870 and went into exile in Great Britain where he died three years later. We learned that she had never lived in it and the small dead end street where it is situated is still named avenue Eugenie. Our original plan was to renovate the apartment and sell it four years later when I would return to an assignment in the USA. Luckily certain circumstances intervened to incite us to keep it. The most determaning factor was my incessant traveling and working the world over. Today, 50 years later, it is still ours but it is up for sale and we have retired to a calm no more traveling life on the french Riviera. Yes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

 

Little did we realize that the town of Saint Cloud, (there is a Saint Cloud in the state of Minnesota) was to become our official residence for the next fifty years. The town has a long and interesting history worthwhile telling. In the year 560 Clodoald, a Merovingian prince, son of Clodomir King of Orleans, escaped the massacre of his family by his uncles Childbert and Clotaire. He built a small monastery on a hill overlooking the Seine river at the edge of the forest which covered all the lands to the west. A small parcel known as the Parc de Saint Cloud still exists today. A small fisherman's village soon developed around the monastery to become the town of Saint Cloud. Today, some 1500 years later, it is a lovely suburb of the city of Paris with a population of 30,000. In Clodoald's time the city of Paris was a small fishermen's village on a small island in the middle of the Seine river known today as l'Ile de la Cite. Some 1500 years later, the city of Paris withs its many suburbs is a megapolis with a population of over ten million souls.

 

During these 1500 years we, the only socalled thinking and intelligent mammal have continued to multiply at an alarming rate. A hundred years ago we numbered about one billion. Today the earth's population is estmated to be 5 billion and in another hundred years it is expected to reach 15 billion. Even today over 50 percent of the inhabitants of our damned earth live in poverty below the subsistance level.

 

During my twenty six years of military service (1942-1968) I was frequently involved directly and indirectly in affairs of espionage against the USSR. I remember one in particular. In the Years 1955 to 1958 I made frequent visits to US Air Force Headquarters in Wiesbaden Germany. In a hanger on the airport next to the building where I worked there was an aircraft of a rather particular design: black with very long wings and a seat for only one pilot. It was known as the U2. Officially the craft was said to be a weather reconnaissance plane attached to our service. The aircraft was capable of flying at very high altitude and over long distances. In reality it was a spy plane in service for the CIA. The plane continued to be flown over the USSR without mishap since the soviet anti-aircraft batteries could not reach that altitude.

However, the Soviets improved their weapons and were able to shoot down the plane in 1960. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers was taken prisoner. He was a civilian assigned to the CIA not the US Air Force. The incident occurred during the presidency of Ike Eisenhower. It caused the canceling of a scheduled summit meeting between president Eisenhower and chief apparatchik Khrouchtchev, head of the Kremlin.

 

During the 1960s, Charles de Gaulle was president of France. He was able to finally establish a stable political system. But as usual in french politics there were still two chiefs: the President and the Prime Minister, a weakness which he was able to counter by his personnal strength. He often spoke of the past glory of France and began to act alone instead of in concert with the USA and Great Britain concerning the relationship with the Soviet Union. It was partially motivated by his desire for vengeance against President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill for the small role they had permitted him to play in he negotiation with the Soviets during and after the end of the war.

In 1963 he was able to end the French-Algerian war and began to practice an independent approach with the Soviet Union. In 1966 he withdrew France from SHAPE, the allied military organization, but retained representation in NATO. He demanded that all the US military bases in France be closed. A year later it was a fait accompli. The half dozen or so air bases were closed and the american military personnel had departed. During this period I was stationed at a US Air Force base in England. I had just returned from a flight to Turkey and to my surprise meet O. Clark Fisher in the passenger lounge. He was an old friend of ours. Clark was a congressman from Texas for over 24 years and was chairman of the Armed Forces committee. He had just returned from attending negotiations with representatives of the French government concerning the french base closings.

 

The technical espionage programs of the three american secret services (CIA,DIA and NSA) have often had profound repercussions on the foreign politics of the USA. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) is an agency of the military establishment in the Pentagon. During the period 1960 to 1964 I was in charge of a computer center in Washington D.C. which was a part of the DIA espionage system. During the USA/USSR/CUBA crisis in 1962 when John F. Kennedy was president, it was with the famous U2 spy plane that the construction of Soviet missile sites was discovered on the island of Fidel Castro.

After this crisis was ended by the withdrawal of the soviet missiles, president Kennedy launched America's great space adventure but did not live to witness the first landing of US astronauts on the moon. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on the 22nd of november 1963. I was in my office when my wife called to give me the bad news concerning the assassination she had just heard on the television. I remember another curious coincidence which is related to these events: the electronic surveillance system used in the Cuban crisis was installed and maintained by ITT. Ten years later I began my eleven year career with CGCT the French subsidiary of ITT, as a worldwide export manager.

 

During the cuban crises in 1962/63, I visited the Pentagon on official business with the DIA fairly frequently. It was there that I first heard the story of the following strange episode. According to a soviet officer, during the cuban crises we had almost started a nuclear war. On the 27th of october 1962, a russian officer named Arkhipov aboard the soviet submarine B-59 had probably saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

On that day, on board the tension was at its height. They had been discovered by the american destroyer "Beale" and were summoned to surface. The submarine was equipped with nuclear missiles and was ready to fire and had the go ahead from Moscow, but under one condition, that is that the three superior officers present on board agree. Two voted for, only Arkhipov voted against. The worst was avoided. It is Vadim Orlov, another officer on board at the time who revealed the incident during a joint cuban-american conference in Havana concerning the 1962 cuban missile crisis.

 

Upon the assassination of president Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, the vice president, became president of the USA. He was a pure son of Texas politics, even with a heavy southern accent. It was he and his counselors whose foreign policy was based upon the fear that communism was about to conquer all of Southeast Asia thus it was imperative that the USA intervene to stop the movement. North Vietnam was openly supported by communist China and the USSR and after their defeat at Diˆn Biˆn Phu, the French wanted nothing more to do with Vietnam. The USA was helping the government of South Vietnam materially and financially in their conflict with communist North Vietnam. But in 1969 the USA became directly involved in this bloody conflict. I had retired from the military service in 1968. After long negotiations with the North Vietnamese, the USA withdrew from South Vietnam in 1973. The northern communists invaded South Vietnam in 1975 to form another closed communist paradise with the capital Saigon renamed Ho Chi Min Ville! The bloody conflict between the North and the South had lasted for twenty years (1955-1975).

 

In the summer of 1964 I left Washington for a new assignment in England. It was a small US Air Force base near High Wycomb a small city west of London. I was in charge of the installation and programming of a new computer system manufactured by UNIVAC, the computer company founded by John Mauchly my professor of physics at Ursinus College. This system and a similar one situated on an Air Force base near Tokyo, Japan were in direct communication via trans-oceanic cable with a system on a base in Oklahoma, which in turn was connected to a computer system which I had installed in Washington D.C. As a part of the system we had a powerful radio intercept installation at Adana, Turkey. I visited the site only once but I shall never forget the trip. The flight on a military aircraft to Adana was without incident. While there i caught a cold and on the return trip my right ear was blocked, I suffered immensely and try as I may I was unable to unblock it. As soon a we landed on the base at Wiesbaden, Germany I rushed to the infirmary. The doctor unblocked it in a few seconds and the terrible pain immediately disappeared. And today in 2002, fifty seven years after the end of World War Two, Several USAF air bases in Germany, Great Britain and Turkey are still in operation, but the enemy is no longer the USSR but Arab and muslim fanatics such as Ben Laden.

 

The United States of America of today is living a veritable paradox. A nation which was founded on peace and brotherly love and has always been basically pacifist, has become the greatest economic and military power in the world. The first immigrants were pacifists such as the Quakers, the Pilgrims, the Mormons and many other religious sects. They were followed by numerous immigrants fleeing oppression, war, persecutions, famines and misery. Difficult to imagine or foresee that such a people would become the slaughterers of the american Indians. In spite of this heritage, this great nation still strongly pacifist and looking for prosperity for all, has become the most armed country in our warlike world. A great nation which only a few decades ago was isolationist is today called upon to play a predominant role in all the conflicts and crises in a world which has become more and more complicated, turbulent and ungovernable.

 

The Second World War in Europe was officially terminated on the 6th of May 1945 with the surrender of NAZI Germany. The war with Japan in the Pacific continued until the month of august and was quickly terminated after the releasing of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Hiroshima bomb killed 140,000 people, not bad for a single bomb! Once again without knowing it I was indirectly associated with this apocalypse: the pilot of the bomber carrying the bombs was a brother of a college classmate. The menace of a nuclear holocaust became evident to the entire world.

The USSR lost no time in developing their atomic arsenal and the frantic armaments race had begun with the addition of dreadful chemical and bacteriological weapons to the stockpiles. Today, at the beginning of the twenty first century, we are still faced with this menace; but it is no longer the Russia of today which is the menace but certain small countries such as Irak and Iran controlled by ambitious and bloodthirsty dictators or religious fanatics such as the Mullahs of Iran and the terrorist organization of Ben Laden. The most incidious and dangerous are the indoctrinated disciples of terrorist organizations such as the one of Ben Laden, who are ready and willing to commit the worst immaginable atrocities in the name of a supposedly all powerful and loving God invented 1400 years ago by Mohammed and his equally ignorant and superstitious disciples. Allah el Allah! Shout God is God, beat your breast, prostrate yourself and you have the right and duty to commit the most abominable atrocities! Denonce and tell the simple truth concerning this abominable and stupid religion and you have the wrath of men, not God, upon your head.