U.S. and Soviet soldiers reunited

Press, 21 April 1986, Page 11

U.S. and Soviet soldiers reunited

The photographs appeared in newspapers throughout the world; sol-

dier shook hands and civilisation sighed. It was 1945, and the war was as good as over. Two of the soldiers were American second lieutenant William

Robertson, and Soviet lieutenant Alexander Sylvashko. They did not know how to talk to each other, but, says Robertson, “We both knew what it meant ... it meant the war was over.”

The action symbolised a bond of peace and a short-lived union that signalled the defeat of the Nazi regime.

Forty years later, Kevin Sim found some old newspaper cuttings and photographs in his attic. “I came across the famous pictures and I began wondering what had happened to the soldiers

since 1945.” A project was born. To find the soldiers.

“When we started work on the project, we had no idea how difficult it would prove to be,” says Sim, who produced the documentary “Yanks Meet Reds” (Two, 10 p.m.).

He went to Russia with the director, Barry Cockroft, but after an extensive search he was on the point of going home, when he received a phone call. “It was Sylvashko.” When the detective

work was over, the job was to arrange a reunion of the original embracers. Robertson — who had become a prominent

brain surgeon after the war — was traced to a plot of land in a Los Angeles suburb once used by M.G.M. to film Tarzan movies. Sylvashko turned out to be a school headmaster, and it was in his

home in Minsk that the reunion was staged.

Robertson and Sylvashko were not the only soldiers celebrating on that day in 1945, however. “Yanks Meet Reds” also brings about a reunion between American lieutenant Albert “Buck” Kotzebue and Soviet sergeant Alexander Orlshansky. Forty years on, they embrace again on the banks of the Elbe.

Says Sylvashko: "All that happened on the Elbe is still so fresh in my mind. I remember everything. Robertson has remained a friend-in-arms and so have the other Americans who met our soldiers on the Elbe. I see no barriers to our friendship even now, though there are still forces in the world which fail to promote our friendship.”

Orlshansky, speaking through an interpreter, told his former comrade: “The spirit of the Elbe is still alive and the spirit of friendship is alive. We can live in peace, just as we lived in friendship when it was necessary to destroy the common enemy of fascism. After the fortieth anniversary of victory, I think people will demand that their Governments introduce laws forbidding war.”