Tom Wyckoff
Born in Enid, Oklahoma, Tom Wyckoff graduated from Putnam City High School in Oklahoma City. The son of an Air Force Officer, he spent much of his life traveling with his family around the United States, Libya (pre-Khadafi), and West Germany. Graduating from Oklahoma State University in 1969 with a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, Tom served twenty-two years on active duty as an Infantryman and as a Soviet Foreign Area Officer. His assignments included positions ranging from Reconnaissance Platoon Leader, to Rifle Company Commander, to Liaison Officer to the Soviet forces in East Germany, to Action Officer on the US Joint Staff. He served five years in Alaska with the 172nd Infantry Brigade (Light, Arctic, Airmobile), in Germany (US Army Russian Institute and US Military Liaison Mission to the Soviet Forces in East Germany), and Washington, DC (Defense Intelligence Agency, Joint Staff, On-Site Inspection Agency). Retiring from the Army in 1993, he is now the Operations Manager for a small business in northern Virginia and travels extensively in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. Tom has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Arts in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is also a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey (Russian language), the US Army Russian Institute, and the Army Command and General Staff College. He is married, a Christian, and a skeet shooter.
Contact the Author: ResurrectionDay@Earthlink.net
Current Project: "Mission: A Cold War Remembrance"
For fifty years, the US Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) to the Soviet Forces in East Germany was one of the premier intelligence collection organizations in the cold war struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Operating 'behind the lines' with excellent access to front line Soviet Forces in East Germany, the officers and non-commissioned officers of the US, British, and French Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps conducted continuous, close up monitoring of the most powerful ground and air forces of the Soviet Union -- those directly confronting NATO forces along the inter-German border. The author was a USMLM liaison officer for four years (1982-1986). He conducted 165 missions traveling more than 100,000 miles throughout East Germany performing close surveillance of the 19 Soviet divisions located there. "Mission" is not a history but a personal recollection of those surveillance activities. Call it a collection of 'war stories,' it is a close up view of an organization that, for fifty years, stood on the cutting edge of the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.
