Let Freedom Ring

This is Freedom Bridge. Whenever we went past that sign but did not make it back to our side this bridge is where we would be returned to the west after the counties made a deal. This is also where I had to go to get Nick’s body when the Russians killed him. That was not good because he was killed the middle of March and I picked him up on the 30th and they did not put him in a bag first, not good I still don’t sleep.

March 31, 1985: Family, friends, colleagues and top Army officials gathered yesterday in a military chapel at Fort Myer to honor Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. and eulogize him as a man who had volunteered for a stressful assignment because he wanted to be on "the cutting edge."

Nicholson, 37, a liaison officer to East Germany, was shot and killed by a Soviet sentry near a garage-like storage shed one week ago. Nicholson, whose hometown was West Redding, Connecticut, had been attached to the 14-member liaison mission in Potsdam since 1982.

As several hundred people honored Nicholson at a service in Fort Myer's Memorial Chapel and a military burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin met at the State Department and agreed on discussions to prevent similar incidents.

After I was captured by the KGB I was brought here for the exchange. They had me for 15 weeks and I still have the needle marks in my hand from them ripping them out when they were done. The building pictured is the KGB prison where I was held. I went back and got this photo in 2006 after the fall of the wall. In the picture if you look on the right side of the sign you see a smaller picture that shows inside. If you see the block area not painted; it's the area where the cells were. We were in boxes 39"X39"X39". I could not lie down other than in a ball or even stand up for 15 weeks except when they took me for Interrogation. The bathroom was a hole in the floor.