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Article: The rusting and fall of the Iron Curtain ; James Carroll
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- November 9, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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`YOU KNOW what's been going on in Berlin," my father said to me.
It was a night in the summer of 1961. I was an ROTC-obsessed student
at Georgetown University. Dad was a general on the Air Staff at the
Pentagon, where he had worked late. He had let his driver go home
early, which meant that I could pick him up in the Lincoln - a
thrill. Now we were cruising across Washington toward Generals' Row
at Bolling Air Base, where our next-door neighbor was General Curtis
LeMay.
"Yes, sir," I said. Berlin was the flashpoint of a confrontation
between the Soviet Union and the United States. Western sectors in
the city were an escape hatch for East Germans and others behind the
Iron Curtain, ...