Johnny Cash is known for a great deal of many things, and one of those things is his military service. Before Cash became the golden goose of Nashville, he served in the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the U.S. Air Force Security Service in Landsberg, West Germany. During his four-year tour, Cash served as a radio intercept operator, which in its simplest form, meant decoding and intercepting messages. Particularly, messages that were delivered on the communist side of the infamous “Iron Curtain.”
Johnny Cash’s four-year tour transpired between 1951 and 1954, which was near the beginning of the Cold War. Hence, it was Cash’s premier job to survey and eavesdrop on Soviet messages, and one Soviet message regarding Russia’s leader, Joseph Stalin, would put Cash in the history books for something other than his music.
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Why Johnny Cash Was The First American to Learn About Stalin’s Death
In 1953, the United States and the Soviet Union were in the heat of the Cold War, and given that Stalin was an enormous perpetrator of this war, his demise was heavily desired and needed. That being so, in 1953, the infamous dictator, Joseph Stalin passed away. This was of course huge news, as it changed the whole entire trajectory and landscape of the war, and the first person to allegedly hear and relay the news was Johnny Cash.
Cash wrote in Cash: The Autobiography, “I was the ace. I was who they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied the first news of Stalin’s death” and “We all knew what to listen for, but I was the one who heard it.” If you are a war historian, then you realize the magnitude of this finding. Frankly, it’s a finding that would have potentially led Cash to live a life of full-time military service. Hence, people and historians of course have their doubts about the legitimacy of Cash’s claim.
One person who did not believe Johnny Cash’s story in the slightest is the author of his authorized biography, The Man Called Cash. Author Steven Turner wrote that Cash’s story brought a, “Wry smile to the faces of those who worked with him.” “He didn’t understand Russian, and if it came in code we wouldn’t have been able to decipher it anyway,” said an interviewee of Turner’s. So, maybe take Cash’s claim with a grain of salt. Though, regardless, it is still a phenomenal big fish story.
Photo by Michel Linssen/Redferns
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