Mikhail Gorbachev had been the chief of the Soviet Union for simply 13 days when he was all of the sudden confronted with a world disaster.
On March 24, 1985, a Soviet sentry shot and killed U.S. Army Maj. Arthur D. “Nick” Nicholson Jr. close to a tank storage constructing in Ludwigslust, East Germany. Nicholson was unarmed and in his uniform. His car carried clearly marked plates figuring out him as a member of the U.S. Army Liaison Mission, a corporation approved by each governments to function within the different’s territory.
The U.S. Division of Warfare formally considers his demise a homicide. It additionally considers Nicholson the ultimate American demise of the Chilly Warfare.
Arthur D. Nicholson
Nicholson grew up in Redding, Connecticut, in a army family. His father was a retired Navy commander. After graduating from Joel Barlow Excessive College in 1965, he attended Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, and entered the Army in 1970.
The service despatched him overseas nearly instantly. He first labored an intelligence posting with a missile battalion in South Korea by way of 1973 and 1974. He then transferred to West Germany, the place he spent the subsequent 5 years embedded with MI items in Frankfurt and Munich. The task cemented his curiosity on Soviet affairs. He turned fluent in Russian and constructed a deep understanding of how the Crimson Army skilled, organized and deployed its forces.
That experience led Nicholson towards an more and more specialised monitor. He accomplished graduate work in Soviet and East European research on the Naval Postgraduate College and spent two years learning the Russian language on the Protection Language Institute. Extra coaching on the Army’s Russian Institute within the Bavarian Alps made him uniquely certified for front-line intelligence work.
By 1982, the Army positioned him in one in every of its most uncommon and harmful billets. He was assigned to the U.S. Army Liaison Mission, headquartered in Potsdam, East Germany.
Intelligence Work
The USMLM traced its origins to the ultimate months of World Warfare II. When the Allies divided Germany into occupation zones, they wanted a method to talk throughout them. In April 1947, Lt. Gen. Clarence Huebner and Soviet Colonel-Basic Mikhail Malinin signed an settlement permitting either side to station small army groups within the different’s territory.
The unique function was coordination and monitoring of German disarmament. However because the Chilly Warfare set in, the missions turned a manner for each side to gather intelligence. The Individuals, British and French despatched groups into East Germany. The Soviets operated reciprocal items in West Germany. Everybody understood the association. Either side discovered it a handy method to monitor one another’s forces with out triggering a confrontation.
The USMLM was approved 14 accredited officers who might journey by way of East Germany observing and documenting Soviet army workouts, tools and amenities. They carried cameras and binoculars as a substitute of weapons. Their automobiles bore distinctive plates that recognized them as liaison mission personnel.
“He needed to be on the market, and he wanted to be on the market, near what he thought of the innovative,” Col. Roland LaJoie, Nicholson’s commanding officer, later mentioned.
The work produced optimistic outcomes. USMLM personnel supplied Washington with ground-level assessments of Soviet army power that no satellite tv for pc picture might match. Their patrols recognized beforehand unknown weapons platforms earlier than they appeared wherever else in American intelligence reporting. Additionally they gathered data on troop morale, readiness and manning ranges that painted a much more nuanced image of Soviet functionality than top-level estimates steered.
The missions had been additionally harmful. Nicholson himself had as soon as been a part of a staff that managed to get inside a Soviet tank and {photograph} its complete inside. Soviet and East German forces frequently harassed and confronted USMLM patrols. Then on March 24, Nicholson was ordered throughout the border once more.
“It ought to have been a milk run,” LaJoie mentioned.
The Capturing
That Sunday morning, Nicholson and his driver, Employees Sgt. Jessie Schatz, headed into East Germany of their marked car. They adopted a convoy of Soviet tanks coming back from goal apply. In some unspecified time in the future, they broke off and approached a tank storage shed utilized by an impartial tank regiment of the 2nd Guards Tank Army close to Ludwigslust, roughly 100 miles northwest of Berlin.
Nicholson acquired out to {photograph} the constructing. He carried a 35mm digicam and binoculars. No weapon. Schatz stayed with the car and watched for Soviet personnel. Neither man detected Soviet Sgt. Aleksandr Ryabtsev, who had slipped out of the woods behind them.
Ryabtsev’s first spherical flew previous Schatz’s head. Nicholson turned towards the car. A second shot hit him within the chest.
“Jessie, I have been shot!” Nicholson referred to as out as he collapsed.
Schatz grabbed his first assist equipment and held up the Crimson Cross emblem to sign peaceable intent. Ryabtsev leveled his AK-47 at Schatz and pinned him contained in the car. For over an hour, Nicholson lay on the bottom. No one touched him or checked his pulse.
The Soviets later claimed he died immediately. An American post-mortem confirmed that Nicholson bled to demise on the bottom whereas Soviet troopers stood close by and did nothing.
Confrontation on the Scene
LaJoie acquired an pressing name from his headquarters that afternoon. The Soviets had been demanding to see him. He grabbed his deputy, Lt. Col. Lawrence Kelley, and a driver and raced towards Ludwigslust, greater than two hours from Berlin.
Soviet troops met them and escorted them to the location. Nobody advised them what had occurred. Once they arrived, LaJoie noticed a hoop of army vans with their headlights skilled on the realm.
“I believed, ‘That is dangerous,'” he recalled.
They discovered Schatz sitting in his car. They requested the place Nicholson was. The reply confirmed their worst fears.
A Soviet three-star common confronted LaJoie and tried to grab management of the state of affairs. He demanded the American car, Nicholson’s physique for post-mortem and the precise to interrogate Schatz.
LaJoie refused on each level. After greater than two hours of tense negotiation in Russian, he acquired the overall to again down. Round midnight, LaJoie took Schatz and each automobiles again to West Berlin, leaving Kelley behind to look at over Nicholson’s physique.
“I used to be the final of us to see Nick alive and the primary to see him lifeless,” LaJoie mentioned on the funeral.
A Diplomatic Disaster
The capturing despatched shockwaves by way of Washington and Moscow. It turned Gorbachev’s first overseas coverage disaster as Soviet chief, threatening to undo any prospect of improved relations with the West.
U.S. Army investigators concluded that Nicholson’s killing was “formally condoned, if in a roundabout way ordered” by Soviet management. The State Division declared the Soviet account of the incident “a distortion of the info.” The Soviets claimed Ryabtsev had challenged an unknown intruder who refused to adjust to warnings. Schatz spoke fluent German and heard no verbal warning of any type earlier than the pictures.
In response, Washington expelled a Soviet diplomat. Plans for the U.S. and Soviet Union to mark the fortieth anniversary of Victory in Europe Day collectively had been scrapped. Secretary of State George Shultz sat down with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to hammer out safeguards in opposition to future confrontations.
Subsequent negotiations produced a Soviet directive that barred using weapons or bodily drive in opposition to allied liaison personnel. That pledge proved ineffective. Two years later, in 1987, Soviet troops opened hearth on one other USMLM patrol and wounded an American serviceman.
Coming House
After a standoff over whether or not the Soviets might carry out an post-mortem, Gen. Glenn Okay. Otis demanded the physique be handed over. The switch occurred on the Glienicke Bridge, the identical Chilly Warfare landmark the place the superpowers had swapped captured spies.
His flag-draped casket was then flown to Rhein-Major Air Base in Frankfurt on March 29, 1985. His spouse, Karyn, and their 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer, stood on the tarmac as a army band performed. Jennifer clutched a doll in a single hand.
At Andrews Air Drive Base the subsequent day, Vice President George H.W. Bush met the household. He referred to as Nicholson “an excellent officer murdered within the line of obligation.” He warned the Soviets that “this kind of brutal worldwide habits jeopardizes immediately the enhancements in relations.”
Nicholson was buried at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery on March 31 in Part 7A, close to his father. All 13 of his USMLM teammates attended. A number of hundred mourners gathered at Fort Myer’s Memorial Chapel as LaJoie delivered a eulogy.
“It was not a battle, it was not a good battle,” LaJoie mentioned. “He was unarmed, in uniform, in broad daylight.”
Nicholson’s widow spoke of her husband’s demise.
“Nick didn’t wish to die, and we didn’t wish to lose him,” she mentioned. “However I do know that he would lay down his life once more for America.”
The Final American Killed within the Chilly Warfare
President Ronald Reagan accepted Nicholson’s posthumous promotion to lieutenant colonel. He additionally acquired the Legion of Advantage and the Purple Coronary heart.
Three years handed earlier than the Soviets supplied any actual acknowledgment. At a 1988 summit in Moscow, Soviet Protection Minister Dmitry Yazov advised his American counterpart, Frank Carlucci, that the Soviet authorities was sorry for what occurred to Nicholson.
In 1991, the Army Intelligence neighborhood added him to its Corridor of Fame. By then, the Chilly Warfare he had spent his profession monitoring was already over. Germany had reunified the earlier October. The Soviet Union itself would stop to exist earlier than the yr was over.
At Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Army’s intelligence coaching middle, a constructing referred to as Nicholson Corridor retains his identify in entrance of each new era of MI troopers. A memorial stone stands close to the location of his demise in Ludwigslust, devoted in 2005 with Karyn and LaJoie in attendance.
The USMLM shut down on Oct. 2, 1990, someday earlier than East and West Germany merged again right into a single nation. Its mission was full. The wall had come down lower than 5 years after Nicholson’s demise.
LaJoie rose to main common earlier than retiring in 1994. In 1988, the Reagan administration tapped him to construct the On-Web site Inspection Company, which despatched American groups into Soviet territory to confirm compliance with the Intermediate-Vary Nuclear Forces Treaty. His inspectors confirmed the destruction of 1,800 Soviet missiles at 133 websites. Among the officers he recruited for these inspection groups had been veterans of the identical USMLM patrols that had as soon as put them within the crosshairs of Soviet sentries.
LaJoie died in October 2023 at age 87. He requested to be buried at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, near Nicholson.
“He not solely handed the assessments, he set the requirements,” LaJoie mentioned of the officer.
In keeping with the Division of Warfare, Nicholson was the final official American service member killed within the line of obligation through the Chilly Warfare. Nonetheless, a number of extra had been wounded or injured within the last years earlier than the Iron Curtain lastly collapsed.
