I have often wished that I had seen more of Turkey. I’ve studied it extensively 
since my time there, and there were so many things that I would have liked to
have seen. I did see the tomb of Kemal Mustafa Attaturk in Ankara. And I’ve
read about him and how he dragged Turkey from the sixteenth century into
the modern era literally in 20 years. I would have liked to see the ruins of Troy,
and Ephesus where, it is said, Mary the mother of Jesus lived out her days 
following the crucifixion. I would liked to have seen the many ruins in what was
Galatia. I now know that Galatia was named by the Romans because the
people of that province were Gauls. And my interest there comes from the 
“Gallic Wars,” when Caesar wrote of the people, “..who in their language were 
called Celts and in ours Gauls.” And I’m a Celt, albeit one from the land of 
Hibernium. And, while our wellspring was somewhere north of the Danube in 
what is present day Romania, we Celts are all related, and I would have loved to 
see Galatia.

But mostly, my strong affection for Sinop was because of the mission. It was at
that time one of Morse and voice. Operations was small enough that we could 
talk to one another about what was going on, and we knew enough that we could
follow the target and understand his problems. I remember one exchange where
I copied one end of the link and a fellow in front of me copied the other. My end
sent “WX IMI,” and his end answered, “WX BD SNEG.” And when Sputnik was
launched, shortly thereafter I said to the whole room, “I don’t know what 
happened, but I know when it happened.” And we heard from a “collateral source,
"Radio Moscow, just what did happen. I should tell you that I was assigned to 
Sinop as a Traffic Analyst, having just come from Devens, where I first completed 
T/A school and then taught T/A to intercept ops. I did do T/A at Sinop, but 
whenever I got the chance, I sat position. Once you have Morse code coursing 
through your veins, you can never get it out. And don’t tell me that I was the only 
one who found copying 22GPM at school an erotic experience.

So, with that long introduction, please allow me (humor me) to explain what was
happening in Sinop in 1957. I wrote the following for a publication called, “After 
Action Report,” and I wrote it in response to an article they had reprinted from a 
house organ sent out from Arlington Hall in the ‘60s and ‘70s, called “The Hallmark.” 
Catchy title. They published articles about different ASA posts around the world, 
probably trying to get people excited enough to volunteer to go to those sites, but 
the article on Sinop was so depressing that I doubt anyone would want to go there,
so I wanted to give my impressions.

Your reprint of The Hallmark article on Sinop in the December 1994 edition, 
evoked powerful memories of Diogenes Station, but my tour at Sinop predates the
article (1973) by some 16 years, being from March 1957 to March 1958. While our 
mailing address was (as it probably still is) TUSLOG Detachment 4, we, too, 
referred to it as "The Hill," not so much in a pejorative sense, as just an apt 
description of what and where it was.

I was in the second "wave" to arrive at Sinop, replacing those who established the 
station in 1956. And my arrival differed considerably from that described in the 
Hallmark article.