16
Lieutenant Steven Creighton walked frantically around the base looking inside the HQ and the operations room. No one had any idea where the Russian interpreters lived. One wise-guy American advised him to try General Kessler or Colonel Paul T. Cullen, who would probably know.
“Who are they?” asked Lieutenant Creighton, but the joker had already disappeared with a grin on his face, and only later did Creighton learn that General Alfred A. Kessler was the US commander of the Poltava Air Base, and Colonel Cullen was his deputy. Both were infamous for their tempers, and they rode the junior officers hard. The staff officer who had advised Creighton to ask them was playing a trick on him. “I’d have been in for it good and proper,” Creighton thought later when he realized what a trap he mig
