Cold War Memories - Malmstrom, Minuteman Missiles and the Apocalypse

 Back in the days of yore when many telephones still had dials and every roof had a TV antenna we all had a very simple vision of how the world would end.

Without a doubt those Soviet type Russians over there on the other side would push a button and the apocalypse would begin. We would respond heroically of course with our own weapons. Land and sea-based ICBM's and of course with the old Air Force war horse, the classic B-52 also known as BUFF or Big Ugly Fat Fucker.

Terror and destruction would rain down from the skies as the United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Israel responded to all of the madness.

The post apocalyptic society would the evolve from theory into reality as survivors crawled out from beneath the rubble and wreckage of the remains of civilization.

My view of this possibility was different than most. The year was 1983 and I was in the United States Air Force as a Security Policeman. These days the Air Force calls them Security Forces, but the duties then and the duties now are basically the same.

The 341st Air base Wing at Malstrom Air Force Base (AFB) sits just outside of Great Falls, Montana and was my home. Great Falls is in the northwest corner of Montana with the great plains to the east and the continental divide to the west. Shortly after arriving I decided that barracks life was not for me and rented a house in the city with a Technical Sergeant named Gary Foster. He was an Arizona guy, a little older than me with a penchant bordering on fetish for firearms and explosives. He is worth a few blogs all by himself but that is for another time.                                                      

The 564th Missile Security Squadron provided missile security for all of the Minuteman III ICBM's located north of Great Falls and Malstrom AFB. This area covered the ground from the little town of Dutton all the way up to Shelby which is near the Canadian border.

Four flights constituted the squadron,  the phonetically named Papa, Quebec, Tango, and Sierra.

As a Staff Sergeant I was the Crew Chief for the squad at Papa-0 (P-0) Launch Control Facility located threes miles east of the farming town of Conrad. You can see a photo of an LCF above. These sites were secure, fenced locations where the the security teams and the missile crews were based. We, the security guys would spend three days there providing response to security situations at 10 missile sites sited at various locations in a 20 mile arc  to the north and west.

40 or so feet underground, in the center of the LCF sat the capsule. The capsule or Launch Control center (LCC) was a big pill shaped re-enforced bunker that sat on  top of big springs in a large cavern carved out of rock for just that purpose. In theory this capsule could survive a nuclear strike. The Missile Control Crew, which consisted of two officers, usually Lieutenants but also the occasional Captain manned this LCC. It was  their job to monitor the electronic security systems of the missiles, notify security of these situations, and to execute a launch order when and if the time came. Their tours of duty were 24 hours.

Each LCF had a Facilities Manager who took care of the place, sometimes using security personnel to assist. There was also a cook assigned, after all everybody has to eat and we were locked in to the place unless a security situation required a response.

Maintenance troops would come and go as required but no one entered without some simple but thorough and effective security procedures that are blog worthy all by themselves.

The LCF could sleep and feed about 25 people when required. Office space, kitchen, day room and dining area, a full bathroom with showers, and five rooms for sleeping were standard issue.

The very thought of these missiles was not comforting to me. One Minuteman III contained three warheads, each programmed separately for a target. Our 10 missiles could theoretically destroy 30 separate cities or military bases. That is a lot of destruction.

Our crew consisted of me and five other troops. They varied a bit over the two years I was there but the ones that I recall are Sellner, Reed, Morales, Green, Standish, McRae, and Bell. Earl Bell was another Sergeant who I outranked even though he was older and had more time in service. He and I had problems that in hindsight were a result of each of our insecurities. These problems manifested themselves into what was the only race-based issue I ever personally encountered. That is also a story for another blog.

We were divided into two three-man teams. One for the 12-hour day shift and one for the 12-hour night shift. The senior team member was the Flight Security Controller (FSC) while the other two comprised the Alarm Response Team (ART). The ART would leave the LCF to respond to any security situation in a security vehicle, usually a Chevy Blazer or a Dodge Ram. The off duty shift was the Security Response Team (SRT) which would be utilized only if things got serious.

The FSC manned the phones, the radio, directed the ART and SRT responses and deployments, and controlled access to the LCF and the missile sites known as Launch Facilities (LF).

When we left Malstrom in our Air Force Blue Chevy Suburban we had all of our personal gear, an M-16 A1 with 220 rounds if ammunition, and all of our required code materials. Once we got to the LCF we assumed control of two M-60 machine guns

with 2,200 rounds of 7.62 ammunition, two M-203 grenade launchers with 18 rounds of 40mm grenades, and an Armored Response Vehicle (ARV) which was a Cadillac Gage Ranger armored truck with a turret for the M-60. See the photo above on the right. We were ready to fight if need be.

The FSC was also equipped with a Smith & Wesson K-38 Combat Masterpiece Revolver Model 15 with 18 rounds of ball ammunition.

For such a small force, we were well armed.

 That's all for now. We can cover more later.

Remembering the Cold War - Young Men and Miniuteman Missiles in Montana

Once There Was A Young Runner - Now There Is Not

Once I was a young and could run with the wind.

When I was wee sprite it was very easy for me to get where I was going. Very little planning was needed. Everywhere that I went, I ran. There was no jogging, no trotting, no easy loping stride. I ran and I ran hard, as fast as I could. Winter or Spring, Summer or Fall it did not matter at all.

Running was always easy and natural for me. A bicycle was always an option, but given my druthers running was always the first choice.

My first foray into organized racing was the original Salem Heritage Days Race in 1973 which was a classic 10K, a distance which is now beginning to come back onto the road racing scene. I ran that race every year until 1978.

In high school, discretion being the better part of valor I decided not to play freshman football. I had played organized football for a few years in a kids league and had some talent, but soaking wet I may have weighed in the vicinity of 115 pounds. Somehow I heard of this thing called Cross-Country Racing which seemed more suited to me.

The next four years found me running hither and yon with one of the finest groups of young schoolboy runners ever gathered in New England. That is no exaggeration. J. Hogan, Thompson, Lockard, Cooney, T. Hogan, Swiniuch, Dionne, Michaud, Nunn, and yes Legault are all names that echo in Salem distance running history.

Undefeated in dual meets for four consecutive years, 4 conference titles, 4 Division titles, A State Championship, a Mass-Conn Title, two State runners-up the second of which was a hairs breadth away from a first place finish. That was the us.

On a personal level I captained the 1978 Cross-Country team and the 1978-79 Winter Track Team. I ran a sub 4:40 mile, a sub 10:00 two mile,  2:35  for the 1,000 yards, and once clocked a 57 second quarter mile as a last minute substitution as the anchor leg in the 1-Mile Relay.

In the Air Force I continued to run on my own. In Japan I developed a rivalry with  a guy by the name of Guttierrez who was of Mexican and Apache heritage. He could fly and no matter how much I trained I could never beat him. He would seemingly be there for me beat no matter the distance, and then in end he would crush me over the final quarter mile. Never did I acknowledge his superior ability and I ended up losing a lot of beer and Jack Daniels bets.

Later on when I was in the Army, yes I switched from one to the other my casual running continued. When I got to Fort Carson In Colorado however I made a minor mistake in approach that resulted n my racing again in a more formal setting.

My arrival at Fort Carson coincided with the annual PT Test for my new unit. There was a young medic there that was considered the big dog of the 2-mile run, Ben Johnson. He was whippet thin and quite confident. I was in good condition but out-weighed the little bastard by 30 pounds and at 26 years to his 19 was considered an old man. The night before I may have talked a little shite and before I knew it we ended up betting a keg of beer on who would beat who on the following morning.

Well, I beat him by half a nose as we both clocked 9:49. The victory was pyrrhic. The Sergeant-Major, the real big dog of the battalion decided that I was going to run on the post track team. My objection to and argument against this plan meant nothing to him. What a Sergeant-Major wants, a Sergeant-Major gets. I was again a distance running track star.

For the next two years I trained for and ran in both cross-country and track races. This was when I ran some of he best times of my life.  One day, on the indoor track at the U. S. Air Force Academy I ran a 4:32 mile. Another day on an outdoor high school track I clocked a 9:39 two-mile.

This is also when I began to incur painful lower leg issues that I would just "run through".

Later on my return to civilian life I continued to do road work and to run various races. One day in Salem N. H. I ran a five-miler that Doug Flutie also ran. I ran a good time that day but he beat me.

I continued to run into my late 30's and into my early 40's but it became more difficult and then it became painful.

My last race was the was the 2010 Wild Turkey 5-Miler on Thanksgiving morning which I hobbled through in 56:11 with bone on bone arthritis in both of my knees. That was no fun, I shuffled more than I ran.

Once I was young and could run with the wind.

Wie spat ist es?

Germany in mid to late 1980's was a fascinating place. The wall in Berlin had not yet come down. Change was in the air but no one really knew what that meant yet. Gorbachev was in power, Reagan was on the way out with and Bush Sr. in the wings as understudy.

The American Army along with the Bundeswehr were planning and preparing for a sudden invasion by the forces of the Warsaw Pact. As far as we knew the Soviet combat soldier was eight-feet tall, impervious to pain, and hungry to chew the tender meat from out delicate American bones.

A part of preparing the American soldier for combat with these behemoths was a week of instruction in the basics of the German language. There was no escaping this course. You had to attend, and attend you did.

The class I attended was taught by a small but lovely young lady with long reddish-brown hair. She was a good teacher who didn't brook nonsense and was fully capable of handling the wise-guys and lover boys that come with any group of young men.

We learned to count, einz, zwei, drei,  and so forth. The definitives were covered, Die, Der, and Das. It was interesting to learn that there was no system to assign one either of the others to a non-gender specific word.

Most everyone struggled at one level or another but for some reason I did not. German for one reason or another clicked easily in my head.

On the last day of class we walked to downtown Kitzengen as both a final test and as a social opportunity. Our assignment was to ask the local folks some basic questions  such as what time is it and where is the bakery, in German and to get the answers in German.

Once we had all done that, we would meet at a local restaurant where we would speak German to each other, order our food in German, and conduct the financial transactions in German using the German money.

As expected, the plan was good, but the actual execution did not go as expected.

I asked the first person I saw, "Wo ist die Backerie?", only to be told in accented English, "across the street young man." Sure enough, the bakery was across the street. I marked it as a win because she had understood the question.

I walked a couple of blocks to an intersection and approached an older gentleman, "Entschuldigen sie bitte, wie spat ist es?"

He looked at me with a smile, then laughed heartily and pointed to the large clock tower directly above his head. As he walked away he continued to laugh.

I do believe that both of those folks had seen this before and were having some fun at my expense.

Der salat und Schnitzel war gut, das Bier ist frisch, und das ist alles.

What Dreams May Come

"To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come."

What better way to start a blog post than with a little morbid Shakespeare?

It is said by those who profess to know that we all dream when we sleep. It is a function of the brain and perhaps natures way of aiding our mind in easing existential concerns. Maybe they reflect or ease what worries us, or are just natures way of entertaining in our slumber.

Seldom do I remember my dreams. Those who claim to understand the human mind have opinions as to why. Some say it because we choose not to remember. Others opine that the waking mind is just not programmed to remember them. Yet it seems that some people recall all or most of their dreams and others few to none of these nocturnal cinematics.

As I child I do not recall if I was an active dreamer. I spent most of adolescence under the influence of an anti-seizure medication that was basically a big-league sedative. That may have been why. My teen years were no different only without the medication. If I dreamed at all I seldom remembered details.

In my early twenties my dream life suddenly became vivid. A recurring dream introduced itself to me that to this day still affects me in odd little ways. You would never notice how, but the residue is there and seems that it always will be. This dream would cause me to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat feeling desperate and lost. I would have to get up and take shower to basically wash it away and relax enough to get back to sleep. Whatever sleep I got afterwards would not be adequate.

As time passed this dream seemed to leave me, but still I would have nights where I awoke in that frantic sweat. The dream would not reveal itself completely, but small parts of it was still there.

Then one day it was gone until years later when I wrote a poem, an ode to those terrifying Nocturnal Trepidations. That poem can be found if you scroll back into the past of this blog.

Now another dream has allowed itself to find a place in my memory. It is a dream of the Salem Y, and features denizens of that facility who are no longer with us. It seems to have been a one time occurrence as I have not been allowed to visit with these memories again.

It did not have the feel of a dream at all. It was if I was taken to a place where that Salem Y, and those within it still exist. It had all of the elements of reality to include sounds and smells. I felt that I did not belong there but was welcomed by all who were in the dream as they expressed surprise at my appearance.

They all greeted me as an old friend who had not been seen in ages and did not expect to see for many more years. We shook hands, slapped backs, and there were even a few hugs. Those that did hug me laughed as they did so knowing that hugs are not my thing.

Conversations were picked up as if we had spoken yesterday. Maybe There had been another dream that I did not recall. They spoke to me of the distant past, the recent past, and of current events. Jimmy K. knew my favored locker number, Big Joe complimented my workout routine, Gordon thanked me for trying to find his wedding band in the pool's filtration system, Charlie Brown made some apologies and a young SSU intern of mine who died of a heroin overdose cried as he spoke of the people who were hurt by his death.

I went off as is my habit in a gym and started my workout as everyone else returned to their routines.

Finally I turned to no one in particular and asked if I was dreaming. Big Joe came over, put his arm around my shoulders as he walked me to the fitness center stairs.

"No Billy", he said. "This is not a dream, but you don't belong here, not yet. It was good to see you but there are things to be done and you should be where you are needed. When we are ready for you here, we'll come and get you."

"To sleep, perchance to Dream. Aye there's the rub,
For in that sleep of life, what future may come."                         

A Return To The Blog

This will be short.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting here again.

Since I left the Patch system back in January after joining the Salem City Council most of my writing has been of the "technical" kind. It is dry, boring and does absolutely nothing to keep the creative chops tight.

There will be no posts here of the local political type.

After a little bit of thought it has been decided to pick on the Red Sox.

Stay tuned.

Even The Best Are Vulnerable

Recently I ran into a friend of mine at a once favored watering hole. It was nice to see him. We said hello and then progressed into a conversation of a serious nature because that is what we do. Never in any of our conversations have we ever actually solved the worlds problems, but damn if we didn't talk as if we could do just that if motivated.

Kevin mentioned that he reads this blog which for some reason surprised me. I don't track who or how many access what I write here. I just write it, post it, and leave it for the blog historians.

"Why haven't you written on the deaths of those SEAL team members in Afghanistan", he asked.

I had no real answer for him. I have been busy, and in reality that is not the purpose of this blog. It was meant to be more personal, a way for me to put thoughts and ideas as to what my writing is or could be out there for others to see.

My earlier post about SEAL Team 6 seems to have resonated with him and a few others. Give them what they want is what entertainment is all about. If writing, even about serious issues is not entertainment then nothing is entertainment.

The military has training from the day you enlist and it never stops until the day you are separated. There are many levels of this training. At boot camp it is done at its most basic. You learn to listen as one in order to respond as a unit. Marching is the most elementary of the training methods and they march you until you don't even have to think about it any more.

As you progress in the military the training also progresses to higher levels while maintaining and re-enforcing the simple and basic. You never escape the marching, you just do less of it.

SEAL training is the peak of the training mountain. All of the Special Forces units are physically difficult and intellectually demanding. Air Force Combat Controllers, Marine Recon and the Army Special Forces demand all a warrior has to offer and more.

1-SFOD-D and the Navy Sea, Air, and Land Teams take it to another level.

A special sort of warrior is required. While physicality is desired, it is really intellect that is the difference between someone at that level and everyone else.

It's great if you can run three miles with a 40-pound rucksack over unknown terrain with nothing but a canteen, a compass, and a map. It's fantastic that you can go three days with only quick catnaps for sleep. It's wonderful that you can bring a man 40 pounds larger and six inches taller to his knees. You are a warrior of exceptional ability.

Can you emerge form the water after mile long swim, find many of your men and weapons lost, maps useless because the Navy dropped you at the wrong spot, communications cut off and still re-form what is left of your team and proceed with your mission? If you can you are that one in 100,000 that the SEALS are looking for.

The fact is you more than likely are not that guy.

The Navy spends a lot of time and money finding and training these warriors. It also spends a lot of money and effort trying to retain them. They are in high demand in the civilian world. there are many corporations that maintain quasi-military units in order to provide intelligence and security for their international business business interests.

Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons is probably the modern prototype for this sort of military/civilian hybrid. He was what Blackwater looks for before Erik Prince was out of grammar school.

All of that money and when the time comes we sometimes choose to put these valuable assets (yes I called them assets) in a thin skinned, slow moving behemoth like a Chinook helicopter.

A warrior is never more vulnerable than when he, and others with him, are confined within a moving piece of metal and mechanical parts. Concerned citizens here express outrage that hum-vees and other military vehicles are without armor. Armor is wonderful in some situations but a hindrance to awareness and mobility in most situations.

While confined within a vehicle a warrior is useless. He cannot defend himself from many of the threats that he faces. All the training, toughness, and smarts in the world will not save him once that vehicle is compromised. All he has then is fate, the luck of the gods of war will either be with him or against him.

A lumbering beast like a Chinook is a death trap if they know you are coming, and it is not difficult to know that a Chinook is coming.

The Taliban either knew, or got very lucky.

I don't feel that luck had anything to do with it.