Invasion of Czechoslovakia.

• Author: Richmond, Yale

Text:

We all remember where we were when important events in history occurred - the attack on Pearl Harbor, D-day in Europe, the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the explosion of the atom bomb over Hiroshima, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But the event I recall most vividly was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia because it affected me and my family.

It was the end of August, 1968, August 20 to be exact, and I was returning to my post in Moscow after a month-long vacation in Finland accompanied by my most precious possessions - my wife and our three small children. And filling out the remaining space in our Plymouth station wagon were the many items we had purchased in Helsinki to make our second year in Moscow more comfortable.

To get an early start on the all-day drive from Finland to Moscow, we decided to overnight at a hotel in Hamina, a small town on the Finnish side of the Soviet border, get a good night's sleep, and leave early the next morning for our nonstop drive to Moscow.

The next morning, Sunday August 21, I rose early and went out to make sure that my car was in good working condition, and try to find an English-language newspaper. As I stepped out of the hotel lobby onto the Hamina town square, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. It was deathly still, and with not a person in sight.

Returning quickly to the hotel lobby, I asked the desk clerk what had happened. "The Russians have invaded Czechoslovakia," he somberly said, "and we are all listening to our radios to see if Finland will be next."

The Finns had good reason to be wary of the Soviet Union, having fought two wars with the Russians in the early 1940s. But my concern at that moment was not Finland but my wife and three children, and whether we should stay put in neutral Finland or cross the border and return to Moscow.

Shto delat? "What to do," as the Russians might ask? There I was, with my entire family, on the Finnish side of the Iron Curtain and heading back into the Soviet Union just as a major military confrontation appeared to be developing in the heart of Europe.

My first task was to get the facts, to find out what was really happening. Like the Finns, I turned to radio to assess the situation. Using the short wave receiver installed in my station wagon, I tuned in to the Voice of America, BBC, Radio Liberty, the Deutsche Welle, and other international broadcasters. They all had plenty of news about movements of the armed forces of the...