Through the Iron Curtain

North Carolina's husky, handsome, 54-year-old Congressman Thurmond Chatham is a man who likes people, parties, a well-bottomed drink--and doing what he pleases. He surprised his Yale classmates by passing up officer training courses, enlisting as a seaman in the Navy in World War I. He startled fellow businessmen by expanding instead of contracting the family business (Chatham blankets) during the Depression, a gamble which eventually made him a millionaire. During World War II he wangled a demotion--from commander to lieutenant commander--to get into combat on a cruiser in the Southwest Pacific.

Glad Shouts. Last week in Germany, Congressman Chatham fell into an adventure which left even his oldest acquaintances breathing a little heavily. One night, as he was seated with a glass of something warming in a West Berlin nightclub, he was spotted by a Russian whom he had known in Washington during World War II. The two men greeted each other with glad shouts, talked for hours, finally went to the Russian's flat in East Berlin. How, asked the Russian, would the Congressman like to go for a drive in the morning? The Congressman would.

When dawn broke, as Chatham told the story, all sorts of things happened. The Russian hustled into a Red army uniform, set forth with the Congressman to a Soviet car pool, and got a jeep. Having passed through the Iron Curtain, they drove on & on, mile after mile into Soviet Germany. Brushing past guards, explaining that his companion was an important representative of a satellite nation, the Russian took the Congressman to a newly built airfield, where he proudly pointed out a line of swept-wing jet planes of late design. Then he drove on to an armored infantry compound where he waved a hand "at about 20 new, turretless, heavily gunned Russian tanks which appeared to stand no more than three feet off the ground. Chatham, entering into the spirit of the occasion, gravely got out his camera and took photographs of the Soviet weapons--which he later sent on to Washington.

Big Bluff. Wasn't he worried that the Russian might be pulling a trick on him? Said Congressman Chatham: "My Russian friend loves America. He wants me to help him get to the U.S., where he would like to settle down on a farm." For four years before Korea, his friend told him, Russia had been pulling the biggest bluff in history. In Korea, the Russian officer said, the U.S.S.R. had lost not only face, but great stores of military equipment which it had hoped to use again in Indo-China and Siam. The Kremlin had also made some very bad mistakes in Europe. "Every one-legged German," said the Russian lugubriously, "would carry a gun against us now."

It was late afternoon before the two friends got back to West Berlin. Gratefully, Congressman Chatham asked if he could do a favor in return. "Yes," said the Russian, "take me to a PX." There Chatham loaded his companion down with nylon stockings, cigarettes, three cans of chocolate sirup, three pounds of U.S. coffee and 15 candy bars, and bade him goodbye.

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