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Some thoughts as we celebrate a week that starts with the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall and continues with Veterans/Armistice/Remembrance Day.
I read somewhere that one of the advantages of being a worker in construction is that no matter how low in the hierarchy you were, every time you go by the bridge or building you worked on you can say proudly "I helped build that!" and be confident that what you took part in should stand for years, maybe centuries.
If I were to say something like "I helped make that happen" while watching the old footage of the Wall's destruction 20 years ago, you might think I was a tad delusional. But in a small way, I contributed.
All of us who served during the Cold War were a part of the strong military front that we placed in Europe to ensure that Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular didn't advance. My role was more direct, being in a Pershing missile unit. At first we were a threat to rain nuclear fire down on countries like Czechoslovakia, Soviet satellites, but of no concern to the USSR unless they actually wanted to mount a westward offensive across Europe. Then while I was there in Germany, we got the Pershing II missiles. Their unclassified range would strike Mother Russia. That helped bring them to the bargaining table.
Also, having high-tech nuclear-armed NATO over the horizon meant that the USSR couldn't distract its people from their ever-worsening economic conditions with war against outside enemies. Afghanistan was a disaster and drain on resources, and with those freedom-loving Americans and other Westerners watching closely on the European front, it was getting harder to keep that frontier firmly under Moscow's thumb. After Solidarity got some wiggle room in Poland, and the Baltic states broke free, then Czechs started to gain their freedom. It stood to reason that East Germany, with little help coming from the Soviets, was going to hold out much longer on its own, especially since its citizens likely wanted reunification anyway. Suddenly, the wall was open, and the rest of what remained of the Iron Curtain crumbled soon after.
It's hard for the youth of today to imagine what it was like living in America in the years before 1989, living with the knowledge that at any time another country on the other side of the globe could cause the city or countryside you lived in to become instantly consumed in nuclear fireballs, knowledge that surviving the attack could be far worse that being incinerated in the blasts. In the 80s we knew that "duck and cover" wasn't going to cut it. There were serious debates about how globally devastating "nuclear winter" would be. We all saw the scene near the end of "War Games" when the computer screen showed various nuclear exchange scenarios, each one blanketing the earth with blasts.
In my unit, when we did a field exercise, it would end with "general exchange" -- take your time packing to go back to post, the world just ended.
But we held up our end of the madness of Mutually Assured Destruction, and the other player blinked. To this day, we're still in the process of putting away our nuclear toys. The Pershings are history, but many thousands of warheads (ours and theirs) remain.
Korea is often regarded as "the forgotten war," but aside from some little skirmishes that have happened through the years, the war most likely to forget its soldiers was the longest one. For much of 1945-89 we were supposedly serving in "peacetime" yet we had an enemy, and well spelled-out missions should we be called upon to enact them. From the time intercontinental missiles came on-line, we had armed weapons aimed at one another.
There are two reasons I don't join the American Legion. The first is the attitude I'm finding reflected in too many veterans -- that Flag=God, Obama bad, Palin good, and to think any other way is unAmerican. But that's for another rant.
The second, which really irks me, is that I qualify for membership solely because my dates of service include the same span of time that the U.S. had its little adventure in Grenada. That quickie war involved only a few units and really had nothing to do with me or any of the US or NATO forces I served with in Europe. But apart from that accident of the calendar, my service doesn't qualify.
That's like being told I can take credit for building a small bridge I never touched, but working on the big span on the other side of town meant nothing. That's not how I work. It's not right, and I won't accept it.
But to what degree I helped weaken a certain wall, that was a job well done.
I read somewhere that one of the advantages of being a worker in construction is that no matter how low in the hierarchy you were, every time you go by the bridge or building you worked on you can say proudly "I helped build that!" and be confident that what you took part in should stand for years, maybe centuries.
If I were to say something like "I helped make that happen" while watching the old footage of the Wall's destruction 20 years ago, you might think I was a tad delusional. But in a small way, I contributed.
All of us who served during the Cold War were a part of the strong military front that we placed in Europe to ensure that Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular didn't advance. My role was more direct, being in a Pershing missile unit. At first we were a threat to rain nuclear fire down on countries like Czechoslovakia, Soviet satellites, but of no concern to the USSR unless they actually wanted to mount a westward offensive across Europe. Then while I was there in Germany, we got the Pershing II missiles. Their unclassified range would strike Mother Russia. That helped bring them to the bargaining table.
Also, having high-tech nuclear-armed NATO over the horizon meant that the USSR couldn't distract its people from their ever-worsening economic conditions with war against outside enemies. Afghanistan was a disaster and drain on resources, and with those freedom-loving Americans and other Westerners watching closely on the European front, it was getting harder to keep that frontier firmly under Moscow's thumb. After Solidarity got some wiggle room in Poland, and the Baltic states broke free, then Czechs started to gain their freedom. It stood to reason that East Germany, with little help coming from the Soviets, was going to hold out much longer on its own, especially since its citizens likely wanted reunification anyway. Suddenly, the wall was open, and the rest of what remained of the Iron Curtain crumbled soon after.
It's hard for the youth of today to imagine what it was like living in America in the years before 1989, living with the knowledge that at any time another country on the other side of the globe could cause the city or countryside you lived in to become instantly consumed in nuclear fireballs, knowledge that surviving the attack could be far worse that being incinerated in the blasts. In the 80s we knew that "duck and cover" wasn't going to cut it. There were serious debates about how globally devastating "nuclear winter" would be. We all saw the scene near the end of "War Games" when the computer screen showed various nuclear exchange scenarios, each one blanketing the earth with blasts.
In my unit, when we did a field exercise, it would end with "general exchange" -- take your time packing to go back to post, the world just ended.
But we held up our end of the madness of Mutually Assured Destruction, and the other player blinked. To this day, we're still in the process of putting away our nuclear toys. The Pershings are history, but many thousands of warheads (ours and theirs) remain.
Korea is often regarded as "the forgotten war," but aside from some little skirmishes that have happened through the years, the war most likely to forget its soldiers was the longest one. For much of 1945-89 we were supposedly serving in "peacetime" yet we had an enemy, and well spelled-out missions should we be called upon to enact them. From the time intercontinental missiles came on-line, we had armed weapons aimed at one another.
There are two reasons I don't join the American Legion. The first is the attitude I'm finding reflected in too many veterans -- that Flag=God, Obama bad, Palin good, and to think any other way is unAmerican. But that's for another rant.
The second, which really irks me, is that I qualify for membership solely because my dates of service include the same span of time that the U.S. had its little adventure in Grenada. That quickie war involved only a few units and really had nothing to do with me or any of the US or NATO forces I served with in Europe. But apart from that accident of the calendar, my service doesn't qualify.
That's like being told I can take credit for building a small bridge I never touched, but working on the big span on the other side of town meant nothing. That's not how I work. It's not right, and I won't accept it.
But to what degree I helped weaken a certain wall, that was a job well done.
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