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STORIES Kenneth Anderson
| Timothy Tuohy, Sr. Designer Remember when there was a Soviet Union and we were all afraid communism would take over the world? Remember "duck and cover" ... and any minute a nuke could fall on your head? I was in the Air Force in 1979 when such things were a way of life. This is a story about how the Air Force kept us ready and vigilant in those days when the only war was cold, but it was still a war. There I was sound asleep in my bed when the phone rang. It was probably around 04:00 when the phone rang in my bedroom. I was living 'off base' in civilian housing because I was married. Montana mornings were already cold in October and getting out of my warm bed surrounded by my wife and dog was not my idea of a good time! "Airman Tuohy," the commanding voice queried in a monotone on the other side (a question that sounded much like a demand) "report for duty." "What's going on?" I asked since I was in Data Processing (an old name for I.T.) and had no security responsibilities. I lived 15 minutes from the base. Dressing and getting to my work location in 20 was a near impossibility, but in the Strategic Air Command an order was never taken lightly even if it was to tie your shoe. So having the chief call saying I had to be in the office in 15 minutes was like hearing from God. Moving like a firefighter to a four alarm fire, I dragged on my uniform, ran a brush through what little hair I had, brushed my teeth and ran out the door to the cold vinyl seats on my Datsun B210. In Great Falls, Mont., there was no rock and roll on the FM radio in those days, and the one station we had was not on the air at this hour of the morning. "Tuohy!" The chief barked in the delightful way that only he could. "Report to the base theater for a briefing ... on the double." I just stood there and looked at him. Colonel Gray, a man who looked and acted remarkably like Colonel Potter on the hit TV show M.A.S.H., looked over at me noting my inactivity. "On the double Airman!" He shouted sternly. This got me moving and startled me since I had never heard him bark an order before. The base theater was half a block away and an easy sprint for me in those days. Arriving there a couple of minutes later, I found most of the airmen on the base waiting in line to enter as well. The discussions were all the same. "Dang it's cold out here. I should have brought a coat?" "Have you ever had a drill like this before?" "This is nothing! We had to do this in the war just so ..." In a few minutes we were all seated and the General in charge of the 24th NORAD region was standing up on the stage. The Wing Commander was with him. "Attention!" The Wing Commander shouted and the room resounded with boots hitting the floor and five hundred or more airmen jumping to their feet. "This is General Fox Commander 24th NORAD Region." In the Air Force you didn't have to use as many words to make a sentence as you did in civilian life. The General took the microphone; the colonel saluted performed a perfect about face and walked off the stage. SAC loved pomp and circumstance. I wondered if you could even make Colonel if you couldn't do a proper about face. "During the night," the General began, "a large force of Soviet troops invaded Canada. We are still uncertain about their strength, but it is apparently multiple battalions." The room was silent. Was this a drill? Montana shared a long unprotected border with Canada and Malmstrom Air Force Base had no defense. We didn't even have any airplanes! What we did have was a couple hundred Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with three nuclear warheads each. All of us knew what was coming next, and we were no longer thinking it was a drill ... we were praying it was a drill. Suddenly the lights went out and the air raid siren wailed mournfully in the early morning predawn darkness. The heel beats of boots marching down the isles of the theater could be heard, and flashlights were tossing their beams around into the frightened eyes of unarmed young men and women in uniform. When the lights came back on, the officers on the stage were held at gunpoint by soldiers who looked like Soviets and spoke Russian! One young man in the front row jumped up, tackled a Soviet soldier and was severely beaten for his actions. The rest of us sat still, wondering what was going on everywhere else in town. How could this be happening; were our families okay? The Soviet officer was spewing the normal rhetoric about the imperialist west and communism. We were convinced. Then the American general stepped back up to the microphone and announced this was a drill. These were the airmen of the Red Star Squadron, and this was the beginning of a three-day Soviet Awareness Briefing. |