PRAISE FOR THE THIN WALL
“I spent the entire 18 years of my life in the U.S. House and Senate attempting to find the answers about what happened to our POWs from WWII, the Cold War, Korea and Viet Nam. I have spoken to witnesses who told me personally, and testified under oath, that they were privy to information regarding POWs being transferred from Viet Nam to the Eastern Bloc and some even sent to Cuba. Although Mr. West has written a fictional account, unfortunately, the plot is based upon truth. Our government knowingly left men to die in the Gulags, and God knows where else, after they fought for their country. The Thin Wall is a gripping account which highlights one of the saddest and most disgraceful chapters in American history.”
─ Senator Bob Smith [R-NH, 1990-2002]
“In a very real sense . . . The Thin Wall exposes bits of truth and reality about the suppressed saga of un-repatriated American Prisoners of War (POWs)──ordeals that took place not just in the 1960s, but throughout the 1900s from the end of the Great War well past the end of the Vietnam era.”
─ William (Chip) Beck
Commander, USNR (retired)
Ex-POW Special Investigator
“The Thin Wall is an intelligent, richly atmospheric, character-driven portrayal of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, brought to vivid immediacy through the conflict between an intriguingly cultured, yet conniving KGB colonel and the people of a small village who courageously (and sometimes timidly) try to resist oppression.”
─ Ron Terpening, author of Cloud Cover
“Be prepared for a roller coaster ride through a moving, thoughtful story with a credibly surprising ending.”
─ Ron Argo, author of The Year of the Monkey
“In The Thin Wall, R. Cyril West raises one of the most important issues of our time──the fate of prisoners of war left behind in enemy hands. This happened in Vietnam, Korea and after World War II when the Soviets took Allied prisoners into the Gulag. Normally this is a depressing tale but West brings it to life.”
─ Nigel Cawthorne, author of The Bamboo Cage
“Using the backdrop of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968, The Thin Wall paints a vivid picture of communist tyranny in a local village. It also exposes the clandestine activities of a Russian operative, which gives us insight as to what might’ve happened to American POWs who never came home.”
─ Jim Escalle, author of Unforgotten Hero
“As the wife of a serviceman who has been listed as Missing In Action since 1968 during the Vietnam War, I have learned just how far our government will go. Even though The Thin Wall is fiction, many of the references made to the POW/MIA issue are real: men were moved to Russia, they were detained many years after the Vietnam War and our country denies knowingly leaving any live servicemen behind.”
─ Barbara Birchim, author of Is Anybody Listening?
“The Thin Wall is a fictional account that reads as truth and exposes the reality and untold personal agonies of the Cold War. As a child I was safe and ignorant of these realities, an inactive bystander and observer. The media reported the Cold War──The Thin Wall lives it. A compelling personal level portrayal revealing not just fear and struggle, but revealing the unreported destinies of American POW’s who were never returned home. During a 21-year Army career I became more aware of the non-return of American POW’s and learned that what we know to be true and what governments acknowledge to be true are two very different facts──The Thin Wall sheds light on these facts.”
─ Warren Martin, author of Forgotten Soldiers
Master Sergeant, US Army Special Forces (retired)
R. CYRIL WEST
THE THIN WALL
MOLON LABE™ BOOKS
Portland, Ore.
This is a work of fiction. Except for historical figures, names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2014 by R. Cyril West
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author or publisher is unlawful practice and theft of the author’s intellectual property─except for brief quotations used in articles and reviews.
Forward written by William (Chip) Beck, and used in this edition with permission.
First Edition
West, R. Cyril
The Thin Wall: POW/MIA Truth novel
ISBN 978-0-9895396-0-9 (acid-free paper)
1. Cold War─fiction 2. POW/MIA─fiction. 3. Conspiracy─fiction. 4.
Czechoslovakia: Prague Spring─fiction 5. Politics
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911323
Author website: www.rcyrilwest.com
In honor of those who served.
In memory of those who never came home.
For families seeking truth.
Prologue: Shock
LENIN WAKE UP, BREZHNEV HAS GONE MAD!
First Act: Fear
AND THEY CAME
Second Act: Conformity
COOPERATION IS PEACE
Third Act: Shame
MYTH AND REALITY
Fourth Act: Interlude
A BRIEFING FOR THE ASCENT
Fifth Act: Rage
GOLIATH’S ARMS
This map will help readers acquaint themselves with the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia, a landlocked country in Central Europe that existed from 1918 to 1993. After World War II, the country was ruled by pro-Moscow communists and was a key member in the Warsaw Pact.
Czechoslovakia’s borders served as the frontline between East and West during the period known as the Cold War.
Czechoslovakia was comprised of three regions, each with its own cultural and historical identity: Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. The country dissolved peacefully in 1993, when Bohemia and Moravia united to become the Czech Republic, and Slovakia split away to become the Slovak Republic.
Most of The Thin Wall takes place in Bohemia, a region once known as the Kingdom of Bohemia, which thrived from 1198–1918. The village of Mersk is a fictional town, not named in the Czech language. Certain geographical markers and structures have been fabricated to enhance the story.
In some instances, American terms and have been used instead of the European equivalence. Some Czech names are spelled differently for ease of pronunciation for non-Czech readers.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ayna Sahhat: Cellist in village quartet
Grigori Dal: Soviet KGB colonel
Milan Husak: Physician and war hero
Bedrich: Village idiot
Emil Kepler: Owner of marionette theatre
Evzen: Husband of Verushka
Father Sudek: Priest
Frank Stevens: CIA operative
Irena: Librarian
Jiri Sahhat: Teenage son of Ayna Sahhat
Josef Novak: Village baker
Gurko: Soviet sergeant major
Horbachsky: Ukrainian private in Soviet Army
Sascha (Saša) Boyd: Violinist in village quartet
Mazur: Ukrainian private in Soviet Army
Nadezda Sahhat: Mother of Ayna Sahhat
Oflan Jakubek: Violist in village quartet
Ota Janus: Schoolteacher
Pavel: Mayor’s chauffeur
Philip Jagr: Proprietor of music shop in Liben
Potapov: Ukrainian private in Soviet Army
Russell Johnston: American prisoner-of-war
Tad Kriz: Violinist in village quartet
Veru
shka: Wife of Evzen
Zdenek Seifert: Mayor
HISTORICAL FIGURES
Alexander Dubček: First Secretary of the Czech Communist Party (b. 1921-1992)
Bedrich Smetana: Celebrated composer (b. 1824-1884)
Leonid Brezhnev: President of the Soviet Union (b. 1906-1982)
Ludvík Svboda: President of Czechoslovakia (b. 1895-1979)
FOREWORD
In what seems like only yesterday, but in reality was almost 30 years ago (1984), I helped a Time Magazine crew emerge from the tattered ruins of West Beirut, which during the previous night had fallen from Christian government control into the hands of the Muslim Amal and Druze militias. A few weeks later, the Time Bureau Chief and I coincidentally sat together flying from Cyprus to London.
During the flight, I mentioned that I wanted to write stories about my six years in the Indochina War (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), but I was not sure whether to write fiction or non-fiction. The older and experienced editor, who had excellent instincts and sources, surmised that I was an intelligence officer, but had the courtesy not to press the issue directly. He was a friend of John Le Carré and knew that career spooks had interesting stories to tell, but that they have restrictions on what they can say and how.
His advice to me at the time resonated and stuck with me all these years. “If you write non-fiction,” he said, “you can tell the facts. If you write fiction, you can tell the truth.”
In a very real sense, that is what R. Cyril West has done with his novel, The Thin Wall. The story exposes bits of truth and reality about the suppressed saga of un-repatriated American Prisoners of War (POWs)—ordeals that took place not just in the 1960s, but throughout the 1900s from the end of the Great War well past the end of the Vietnam era.
Scattered among the fictional characters that populate R. Cyril West’s story—which covers real historical events of the 1960s that I remembered as a young Naval Officer──are people that I recognize as real types of operatives and knew about from my last years in the Navy as a POW Special Investigator in the mid-1990s.
If anyone doubts that Americans were held long past the end of the separate wars in which they fought, and detained secretly by the Soviets and their allies in a 50-60 year span of the 20th century, then the longterm deception operations by the NKVD, GRU, KGB, and SVR is still alive and working today. From 1918 until at least 1979, approximately nine thousand American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen were transported clandestinely from prison camps of the Murmansk Peninsula, Korea, Europe, and Indochina and buried deep in the Gulag Archipelago along with 35 million other Russians and foreign soldiers.
Sometimes telling the immense story about the nine thousand un-repatriated POWs, as I have done with Congressional Committees, Veterans, POW families, and Rolling Thunder, boggles the minds of ordinary citizens and politicians. Relating what happened to many by the telling of one vulnerable prisoner──Gunnery Sergeant Johnston──as R. Cyril West does, can open eyes to a broader truth.
As I write this foreword for my friend Rob, it is Memorial Day, 2013. What readers should remember is that POWs like the one in The Thin Wall were active duty U.S. military personnel until the days when they died, forgotten by a grateful nation, abandoned by the military, yet surviving for years, even decades after the conflicts in which they served had ended for their compatriots on the Home Front. To me, these men are the unsung heroes and non-cataloged veterans of the 20th Century. Their individual stories and collective saga has not been adequately told, properly exposed, or duly recognized by any American administration.
As you read The Thin Wall, think about that. This may be a work of fiction, but it contains far more than just an element of truth in its telling. To honor these lost heroes, America needs to complete the mission by first accepting the truth about them, then exposing it.
William (Chip) Beck
Commander, USNR (retired)
Arlington, Virginia
27 May 2013
THE THIN WALL
Prologue: Shock
LENIN WAKE UP, BREZHNEV HAS GONE MAD!
God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.
WALTER DE LA MARE
By noon the people of Mersk were in a panic.
Several men with a Czechoslovak flag stumbled from the village tavern and marched down the street. “Russians go home,” they shouted, “Hands off Czechoslovakia!”
They drank mugs of Budvar and threw angry fists in the air. Invasion had come. They had watched it on the tavern’s black and white television. Tens of thousands of foreign troops were pouring into their homeland. Tanks. Machine guns. Grenades. Who would have thought it possible? When they reached the flower shop, a drunk, savagely murderous voice cried hoarsely, “Brezhnev is a war criminal!”
At the bus stop in front of the marionette theatre they paused to sing the national anthem with a street musician and his black accordion. It was quite a performance. The accordionist, who was in his seventies, swayed on the heels of his feet and squeezed the lungs of his wheezing instrument without missing a key. And the men, hooked arm in arm, sang high above the red-tiled rooftops with rumbling voices. Their faces were pitched to the sky, rapt in hymn, “And this is that beautiful land, the Czech land, my home . . .” They might have made a fortune that day, but no one was throwing coins.
While they savored their performance, a barista left the coffee house. “Secretary Dubček has been arrested,” he said, terror in his voice. “Russian soldiers stormed the Central Committee building and put him in handcuffs.”
“Dubček?”
“Along with Comrades Cernik and Kriegel.”
Now tears filled their troubled eyes.
A tall fellow with a deep growl reminded them that they had survived the Habsburg rule and the Thousand-Year Reich. They would survive this. “Keep singing, comrades.” And they did, bellowing out a patriotic song of kings, of soldiers, and war.
The revelers kept their heads up and walked on.
They passed a barbershop with its polished mirrors, the historic eight-room inn, and a butcher shop that smelled like sausage.
On this street the two-story row houses were painted in yellows and blues. It was the main road leading into the heart of the village, lined with street lamps and tall birch trees. Someone tossed a warm loaf of bread from an upstairs window. Another person made a fist and spat, “Push them back to Moscow!”
Door by door people joined them, man and woman, old and young, and the impromptu parade gained strength like a slow moving hurricane. Soon the sound of clacking heels had grown to fifty citizens. Yet there were no banners or drums to march to, only handholding and solidarity. By the time the procession reached the marketplace it was white hot with voices declaring their allegiance to President Ludvík Svboda──hero and victim of the Stalinist purges.
In the church, a block away at the square, citizens sat shoulder to shoulder in the summer heat, fanning themselves with prayer sheets and hats. It was 21 August, 1968. There was much to be said this day about the Russians. But who among them dared speak first? The butcher, the banker, the blind veteran?
From their dropped jaws came a sense of shock, as though a respected member of the neighborhood had been murdered. Maybe this was worse. They had woken up to catastrophic news: hours earlier, at the stroke of midnight, Russian agents had seized Prague’s Ruzyne airport and cleared the way for Soviet planes to land. Indeed, everyone was stunned.
“The Kremlin lies,” the blind veteran finally said to the white-haired priest. “They promised peace two months ago. Now this invasion.” A look of strain and hatred came to his face. He was standing against a stone wall, surrounded by people pouring into the church.
“I know you must have many questions,” Father Sudek said calmly, hovering at the pulpit. “But have faith. Time has a way of sorting these things out . . .”
The parishioners were restless. In fact, they did have man
y questions. But most went unanswered while they cried out against the Soviet Union, damned Stalin, cursed Brezhnev, and blamed members of the Czech government for the turmoil in the country, calling them “collaborators” for what had happened.
AYNA SAHHAT was aware of the fuss. She lived in a narrow row house along the square. On the streets below her window, she saw the drunks with the flag and the angry mob gathered on the cobble. Only twice in her lifetime had the people been this upset: when she was a baby during the German occupation from 1938 to 1945 and ten years ago when vandals desecrated their ancestors at the cemetery.
Now the Russians occupied her homeland. Had they really taken over the airport?
Ayna was afraid of them. Always had been. The butchers who ran the Soviet Union held a shadowy hand in their lives──a hand that sometimes felt more like a fist. And why not? Russian agents lurked in the halls of the Castle, in the press, at the university, on the streets. How many Czechs had they arrested over the years? How many people were sent to the Gulags? How many lives ruined?
Ayna dreaded the answers.
This was all too real.
She zipped up her natty bell-bottom jeans, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and set off.
She left the house, headed toward the square across the street. There was a group of young men and women her age, many of them former high school classmates, huddled near a row of parked cars. They were listening to the grim news from Radio Prague and peering at her through a sheathe of cigarette smoke.
Someone made a joke, “Look, it’s Ayna-the-gypsy. Maybe she will save us from the Russian invaders.” Some laughed.
Ayna was numb to the familiar jeers. But the memories of their teasing had stayed with her like a clump of mud on her shoe. They knew better. She was not Romani. Or Arabian. Or even Asian. She was a mix of her mother’s Czech and her father’s Azeri blood. She was, as most people in town agreed, unique. If anything, she was proud of her bloodline. She was a descendant of the 19th century poet Khurshidbanu Natavan, the hereditary princess of Karabakh. In Ayna’s mind, this made her a princess, too. Even if it meant a princess without a country.
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