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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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060589
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06058900.029
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 49American NotesVETERANS"Our Mutual Tragedy"
A dozen Soviets landed in Washington last week, but they were
not mere tourists. Veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, they
came through an exchange that has also taken some 50 American Viet
Nam veterans to the Soviet Union. The program has achieved profound
communions between men who thought of themselves as enemies. In
Moscow, after a Soviet vet ripped open his shirt to reveal a wound
caused by a U.S. machine gun, a Viet Nam veteran displayed a leg
wound inflicted by a Soviet-made mine. Suddenly, the strangers
sensed, as American Larry Oswald put it, that they were "in many
ways brothers." Said Soviet veteran Sasha Karpenko: "We feel
ourselves part of those who died in Viet Nam. This is our mutual
tragedy."
Last week Danny Reed took Igor Morozov, 23, to the Viet Nam
Veterans Memorial. They found the name of Reed's friend Ivan Smith,
killed in 1965. Morozov tenderly ran his fingers over the engraved
name and left a carnation there. The two veterans embraced, then
walked away.