________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
A:
Oh, it was. That evening, whereas at Wunsdorf we only ate dinner with our officer hosts, we
invited them to eat dinner with us and our wives.
The USAREUR chorus sang--not the professional actors that they had, but a very good
bunch of soldiers. We explained to them they were soldiers in wartime, not professional
entertainers.
The next day we flew down to Grafenwhr and took them out to see artillery outfits set up to
shoot and then took them out on our range and watched our tanks go down range, live fire.
One of our tanks skipped a round up into the target, and the Chief of Staff picked up on that.
"Ah, it just skipped." Then we said, "Yeah," and took him up into the control tower, and he
found out that the person had not been credited for the hit on the scoring system. So, we had
a good interaction with that.
Then they left from Grafenwhr and drove back on up across the border at Hof.
So, that was our exchange of activities--very cordial and very professional with an
understanding of each other.
Q:
Itself something different, that probably had not happened often, if at all, had it? That sort of
real, open exchange between Soviet and our forces?
A:
No, not to that degree. I believe back in General Blanchard's day, he told me there had been a
meeting, I believe, between him and his senior counterpart. We had much acrimony in the
interim. For instance, just before I got there, the killing of Major [Arthur D., Jr.] Nicholson
of our military mission had been rather brutal, and there were a lot of hard feelings that went
with that.
We had other meetings between me and their Chief of Staff, Major General Fursin, to try to
ensure that the rules of engagement, or disengagement, working with each other's mission
people--ours over there, theirs here--did not lead to things that were threatening harm to
those people.
Q:
So, you worked with their Chief of Staff on that issue?
A:
Yes. Those were formal. We met in Potsdam, and we'd have interactions through the
missions in the interim.
Q:
Well, along these same lines, I think you mentioned earlier this afternoon that USAREUR
was giving some thought to restationing, to looking towards the future, some changes in
stationing.
A:
Yes. It seemed to General Saint that the writing was on the wall, that the clamor now in
Congress--we'd had Senator [Sam] Nunn come over and talk with us, and several
congressmen, and Senator Hollings had been over--that we'd best start the planning for
contingent drawdowns. Yet, it needed to be a very close-hold kind of thing because we were
really only talking contingency.
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