[Milsurplus] OT re: Images Past-Present

[Hue Miller]

>Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2012 13:54:13 -0400
>From: "Mike Feher" <n4fs at eozinc.com>
>Truly amazing how little change there really is. I just wonder how much
>change I would notice (from what I remember as a 11 year old in 1956), if I
>were now to go back to the city where I lived in Hungary. Regards - Mike

Mike, I am a bit younger. I am taking a guess at when you left. But this
reminded me: in that year I, sister, brother  and mother were living with
aunt and uncle in Mannheim Germany, in a three room apartment with cold
water and a stove in the kitchen for heat. ( Taking weekly baths was a big
project. )  They had been pretty lucky, only the windows had been blown
out from the bombing, whereas the building across the street was now
only a crater, only some shrapnel had come in their windows,  and their
only child, a son , had returned from the U-boat service in one
piece, and had a good job in construction.  One day my relatives were 
excited
and  hurrying about, they said there was a collection of  blankets for the
refugees from the Hungarian rebellion. I looked out their window and down
in the street was a truck, a large open backed truck, and people were coming
out into the street and handing bundles up to men in the truck. I was kind 
of too
young to understand, really, but three years later I read my dad's copy of
"The Bridge at Andau". When he found out he remonstrated that it
was not a book for children. ( How true. )
One thing has puzzled me, since I read about it years ago, possibly in
a column by Tom Kneitel in 'Electronics Illustrated', possibly, as it 
puzzled
many in the West, no doubt: shortwave messages pleading for help from
the Hungarian rebels in the last days of the rebellion, or - as I  recall -
even after the rebellion had been crushed. The theory, unlikely as it may
seem, was that these broadcasts were really created by the KGB*  to rub
salt in the wounds of the impotent Western powers.  It's a mystery, and
AFAIK still unresolved to any more definite explanation. I I vaguely recall
seeing in the New York Review of Books some years back an exchange of
letters (pre email, of course, hi ) about the subject. Damn me, I wanted to
save that copy, but I fear I tossed it in one of the paper purges. One 
writer had
been in the U.S. Army armored at the time, and if I recall, his comments
were how they were perfectly aware of what was going on but also felt
totally paralyzed  as the West could hardly  initiate WW3 over Hungary.
There might have been more in his anecdote about the radio messages issue,
but unfortunately I can't recall.....( silicon memory is so much better than
organic memory...)
-Hue Miller
*Or was it the NKVD in those years?
**You know, someone should come out with some thrilling but intelligent
Cold War themed movies for us boomers. All the ingredients are there.