The cab driver arrived at the Moscow airport, a confederate-themed song playing in his car. He said that he had read a lot about the American Civil War and loved reading historical original documents. He shared his views on the American Civil War and then segued into a discussion about WWII.
He then mentioned that his grandfather had been freed from a German prisoner camp by US soldiers and taken to California along with a few thousand other Red army personnel for further medical help. The US offered to let the Red army soldiers stay in the US, but nearly all chose to return.
The taxi driver said one of the US army personal had given his grandfather a signed $10 bill that his family still has.
The Red army soldiers choosing to return were taken to Vladivostok. His grandfather, an Ossetian, met another Ossetian in Vladivostok. She was a young woman who had been sent to Vladivostok, as the taxi driver put it, for stealing bread from the store she worked at to feed her starving family. The two got married and settled in North Ossetia.
”My grandmother would say that when people [during Soviet times] would say something bad about Americans, my grandfather would respond that they are good people.”
