The Connection

With roots in Czechoslovakia, it was only natural that Springfield resident Robert Tecklenburg’s recently published novel, titled “PRAGUE: Darkness

Descending,” is a historical mystery set in Central Europe after World War II. The book was published in March by Blue Water Press and is the sixth book Tecklenburg has written.

The story follows Charles Stanek, a former American OSS agent as he returns to Czechoslovakia in 1948 to rescue a former lover and her child. “In Prague, and in the mountains of eastern Czechoslovakia, the Soviets and Stanek play a cat and mouse game. Maria, his former lover, uses her position in the newly installed Czech government to keep the Russians off-balance and help Stanek match wits with the Soviets in a life or death battle,” as the publisher Blue Water Press describes it.

He must do battle to outwit Soviet agents, Czech security, and an American double agent to accomplish his mission and return to Australia where he had been hiding for two years. “The Russians were looking for him and the outback of Australia was the most remote place he could hide out in,” Tecklenburg said.

TECKLENBURG is a former Marine that was raised in Iowa, but moved to Springfield when he took on a job as manager of a Veteran’s center. He is a Vietnam veteran with experience working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a Readjustment Counseling Specialist in the Vet Center Program providing mostly therapy for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD,) in Iowa and West Virginia. Post traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that develops following frightening, stressful, or distressing life events. PTSD came to light with the Vietnam veterans and the issues surrounding that war, which ended in 1975.

Tecklenburg spent 1968-1969 with the First Marine Division, stationed near Danang and Phu Bai, and noted that the PTSD was not new to soldiers but “it was called different things in different wars,” he said. The Vietnam Veterans repressed issues unlike other wars. “You can’t repress everything forever,” he said. As a result PTSD was being addressed more in the later 1970s, he mentioned.

Tecklenburg’s mother has roots in Czechoslovakia and he’s wondered about the country since he was a child. His great grandparents came from Prague, so the stories he heard as a youngster spawned his interest in the “old country,” as it was known. He has a master’s degree in history. “I've always loved history, and in college I studied the WWII era of European history in considerable depth,” he said.

When Tecklenburg is not writing, he has a boat and sails on the Chesapeake Bay from time to time, and has read “Chapman Piloting,” which is described on Amazon as a comprehensive reference to all that a captain could be expected to know. It’s a bible to sailing that Tecklenburg recommends any new boaters to read.

ALTHOUGH HE IS QUARANTINED like everyone else in Springfield, he’s working on another novel about World War II and post-war, but not in the same setting. He takes on tasks around the house, reads and helps with the cooking. He had a book signing scheduled on Fort Belvoir coming in June, but it might have to be rescheduled, and plans on another book signing at Fort Myer in Arlington sometime in the near future.

The book is now available in hardcover, but will be in paperback and online soon.