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Post by gocav76 on Mar 15, 2008 8:12:15 GMT -6
Found this recording of a phone call. JFK asks Ike's advice on Cuban missile crisis. I was only 5 years old when this was going on, but remember my Dad talking about it. I remember he was working night shift and all the guys were listening on the radio as the Russian ships came closer to the blockade. Each report would mention the distance closing and the suspense must have been something! At the final moment the Russian ships pulled back and withdrew. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkzjodKAQhA&feature=related
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Post by clw on Mar 15, 2008 9:57:38 GMT -6
I remember those drills in school -- we had to dive under our desks when the sirens went off. Like that was gonna save us. And everybody was building fallout shelters in the backyard. They were great places for kids to campout. I was 13 Larry, and yeah, the suspense was something. The point where those ships pulled back is still a crystal clear memory. The cheering was deafening.
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Post by elisabeth on Mar 15, 2008 10:40:54 GMT -6
Lord, how this takes me back. Because of the time difference, it was daytime over here when the make-or-break moment came. My father went off to work, we kids went off to school, my mum buckled down to the housework, with absolutely no idea whether we'd see each other again or whether the world would have ended before teatime. We were all being frightfully British about it -- stiff upper lip, no emotional farewells, avoiding the subject entirely -- but I've never seen so many paper-white faces as there were in school assembly that day. The school followed the same don't-talk-about-it principle, so there were no emergency drills or anything: just the usual maths, geography, etc. timetable, with the only concession being not getting told off for furtively glancing out of the window every so often to see if the sky was still there ... Terrifying.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Mar 15, 2008 19:24:02 GMT -6
Especially terrifying when you're a child who doesn't understand why another nation would want to kill you. We lived in the DC suburbs then and had drills -- crouch down in the hallway with your legs curled under you, one arm across your eyes and the other behind your neck -- on a daily basis. My most terrifying memory is the time they had us all make a mad dash home, presumably so we could die with our mothers. We were told in school that Washington would be the first to be hit, and I later found out from college friends that those who lived around Wright-Patterson AFB (near Dayton, Ohio) were told they would be one of the first. It seems those of us who were near military bases got the worst of the terror.
I don't think I've ever forgiven JFK for that . . . . I'm sorry for what happened to him, but I will always link him with that terror.
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Post by Melani on Mar 15, 2008 20:52:18 GMT -6
We didn't talk about it, like Elisabeth--but I remember sitting in a history class, not doing anything, just waiting...
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Post by Jas. Watson on Mar 15, 2008 22:04:33 GMT -6
Well, I was in highschool then and in my youthful naiveite just thought it exciting. I don't think me and my ilk ever really thought anything would happen. Ah youth....
Jas~
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Post by BrokenSword on Mar 16, 2008 7:44:22 GMT -6
"...crouch down in the hallway with your legs curled under you, one arm across your eyes and the other behind your neck ..."
Sounds like me at the local bar when the guys have had too much -- dare I say, "NU..." Well you get it.
My attitude was more like Jas. Watson's, but I was in Jr. High at the time. I don't remember any cheering. Nobody I knew seemed to think that the Soviets had any choice but to back down and knock off with that crap.
We do, today, forget that one US serviceman was killed during the entire crisis. An American spy plane pilot who was lost (shot down) on a reconnaissance flight over the area.
Soldiers died every week during those times. Nearly all of them quietly, and anomously. Deadly battlefields were spread over the entire globe and few if any of us were even aware of them. A 'Cold War' was how we saw it, but an entirely hot war to the families who greeted the caskets returning. If they were lucky enough to even recieve one.
The price has always been paid, even on those occasions when the rest of us thought that all had dodged the bullet.
When the crisis ended and the rest of us happily high fived each other , or what-ever celebratory thing we did then, President Kennedy had to sit down alone, and write another sad little letter to a new widow and a suddenly fatherless son.
Madman Mike
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Post by wild on Apr 10, 2008 11:38:40 GMT -6
You must not forget that the US had already placed similar weapons in Turkey which bordered the USSR.In fact all the NATO countries surrounding the USSR had nuclear weapons deployed targeting the USSR. But what was not known at the time of the crisis was that nuclear weapons were present and deployed in Cuba to be used if there was an invasion. The breaking of the blockcade was not the most dangerious trigger but an invaion.
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