A Cold War Tale Prisoner Release

This blog was originally set up to share personal stories of Cold War service and accomplishments.

I encountered this news story today and thought it really fit that original goal. It is also a very interesting story of personal risk and emotional toll after capture. It really was a different world back then. I was only 13 when it happened and do not remember this story.

It is titled A Cold War tale from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper.

Here is an excerpt . . .

The four young Americans sit behind a table clogged with microphones in the brief newsreel. As the announcer proclaims the news of their release from the East German prison, one of the two African-Americans takes a drag on a cigarette, while fatigue and emotion tug at the face of the young woman with the 1960s bouffant hairdo when the camera pans across the group.

It was Feb. 3, 1967, and the story of their release after secret talks was racing across the news wires.

Forty-eight years later, the phone rang to voicemail in the Akron, Ohio, home of Moses Reese Herrin.

Not until the words "I'm trying to find an ex-GI who was in Germany in the 60s" did he pick up.

Was he the former GI appearing in that newsreel, freed after being convicted in 1965 to eight years for smuggling East Germans across the Berlin Wall?

Link over to finish the story and view additional photographs and the newsreel . . .

http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2015/04/22/a-cold-war-tale/

Thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette organization for allowing me to repost this.