Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

But it was about 30, 35 miles across the actual border. So that's where I picked up my

tactical call, Sonsky, H-A-W and S-K-I, and had a friend on another squadron who was named

with Jerkowski, and he said,

well, you know, if you're going to fly in the East Zone, I guess we'll have to give you a

Russian-sounding name, so I became Hansky, and I've been Hansky ever since.

This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to first-hand

Cold War history accounts. Do make sure you follow us in your podcast app or join our emailing

list at Cold Warconversations.com. In this episode, we speak with Laurie Horn, who is a retired member of Parliament and former career fighter pilot in the Canadian forces.

Laurie has some great stories of flying the CF 104 Starfighter in Europe as part of the NATO commitment for low-level ground attack.

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So on to the podcast, we welcome Laurie Horn, aka Hornsky, to our Cold War Conversation.

Laurie, welcome to Cold War Conversations. Delighted to have you on.

Thank you. Great to be here with you.

You've got some interesting stories, which I think we will absolutely come on to. But the first thing I wanted to ask you

was, why did you join the Royal Canadian Air Force? Well, it goes back to when I was a young boy.

We lived in Winnipeg, which is the center of the country, and we vacationed or we spent

the summers on Lake Winnipeg.

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