Robert E. Townsend

I grew up on an impoverished Wisconsin farm in the 1950s. Slavic and German immigrants told stories drinking whiskey and playing pinochle. With a child's ear, I listened as they told tales and hinted at war, starvation, and massacre. A pause, a glance, a shake of the head; these were the fragments of truth they shared, teaching me early lessons in deception and the silences that speak volumes.

My forebears - Scots-Irish, rednecks, crackers, 'born fighting’, call them what you will. My great-grandfather, Lott Townsend, Company H of the 50th Georgia Infantry Regiment, "Colquitt Marksmen," organized in Moultrie, Georgia — the county seat of Colquitt County — in early 1862.

My father, like most WWII veterans, didn't talk much. His was the war in the Pacific. On Okinawa, he watched Japanese women leap from the cliffs to their deaths. His medical corpsman was a conscientious objector, whom I later learned, was Desmond Doss, Medal of Honor winner and subject of the Mel Gibson movie 'Hacksaw Ridge'. He thought the men on the destroyers under suicide attacks had it worse. It was something I found often true. No matter how bad it was, some other guy had it worse.

These were the fragments of truth they shared, teaching me early lessons in deception and the silences that speak volumes.

in 1965, I left the farm for the University of Wisconsin (Listen to my University of Wisconsin Alumnus Interview ). My world expanded dramatically, from 200 miles to a new reality of brilliant New Yorkers, intense political debates, and anti-war riots.

I chose to study the Russian language, hoping to fill in the unspoken pauses of my childhood visitors. Football was replaced by books, and my simple worldview was challenged by the complex philosophies of Malraux and Dostoevsky and the harsh history of Robert Conquest.

My own military career began in Vietnam and quickly moved onto the Soviet Union. In July 1989, exhausted, I retired. Someone else would struggle with the Soviet Union. In October 1989, the Berlin fell.