Lee Harvey Oswald Arrives in the USSR

In the early morning of September 20, 1959, the marion lykes left New Orleans. There were only four passengers on board the freighter: Lee Harvey Oswald; Billy Joe Lord, a twenty-two-year-old airman (third class) from Midland, Texas; George B. Church, a junior high school teacher from Tampa who had been a lieutenant colonel in the army; and Church’s wife, who is referred to by the Warren Commission as Mrs. George B. Church. Oswald roomed with Lord, who was planning to attend college in France. Lord, like the Churches, told the Warren Commission that Oswald had told them he was thinking about studying in Switzerland. Lord said that he and Oswald had talked about religion and that Oswald had told him that science proved that God did not exist. (Lord thought Oswald said this because he noticed Lord had a Bible.) Lord called Oswald “extremely cynical.”

George Church said all the passengers ate at one table but that Oswald “missed quite a few meals because he was seasick much of the time.” The one conversation Church had with Oswald had to do with the Depression. “Oswald appeared quite bitter as to the hard time his mother had suffered during this period,” Church testified. “I tried to point out to Oswald that I had lived through and survived the Depression and that millions of people in the United States also had suffered during those years. This, however, made no impression on Oswald.” Mrs. Church was also put off by Oswald. “Upon completion of the voyage aboard the S.S. Marion Lykes, I obtained the address of Bill Lord for the purpose of perhaps later writing him or sending him Christmas cards,” Mrs. Church said. “I also requested Oswald’s address and he questioned the purpose of my request.” Eventually, Mrs. Church said, Oswald “reluctantly” gave her the Fort Worth address of his mother, who did not know where he was at that moment. Marguerite knew he was overseas—he had told her, in a letter that he mailed before boarding the Marion Lykes, that he had booked passage on a ship to Europe—but very little else. He had stressed that “my values are very different from Robert’s or your’s. It is difficult to tell you how I feel, Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could harly be expected to understand.”

From Le Havre Oswald traveled to London, and from London he flew to Helsinki. In contrast with what he had told the passport office, studying in Switzerland was not on his agenda. In Helsinki, he checked into the Torni Hotel, and the next day he moved to the Klaus Kurki Hotel, about ten minutes away, by foot. The weather was typical for October—chilly, with temperatures in the high thirties and low forties, and intermittent rain. Outside the hotel was a narrow street made of cobblestones. There was a café. It was gray and quiet.

On Monday, October 12, Oswald applied for a visa at the Soviet embassy in Helsinki. The embassy was about a twenty-minute walk from Oswald’s hotel, and it was situated in the middle of what looked like a park: lovely, rolling, and blanketed with trees and surrounded by walls and wrought-iron fences. It was near the water, facing south. Two days later, on October 14, the embassy issued him visa #403339. It was valid until October 20; according to Oswald’s passport, it would later be extended by forty-eight hours, until October 22.

At 12:25 p.m., October 15, Oswald’s train pulled out of Helsinki and headed toward the Soviet border. At about 6 p.m., the train was scheduled to arrive at Vainikkala, just west of the border. In Vainikkala, the train changed engines, from a Finnish steam engine to an older, slower, Russian diesel. Then the train shuffled on a few miles to the border, where there was a cluster of two- and threestory buildings with fences wrapped snuggly around them. It had been cloudy and raining intermittently...