but during that war there was a nuclear event precipitated by the United States. I was in Minot, North Dakota, assigned to the SAC Base there in the Northern Tier -- in a State (North Dakota) which was the third largest nuclear power on the planet at that time, trailing by only a little bit behind all the rest of the United States and the then-Soviet Union.
When we went on nuclear alert that month (in response it was said to a minor Soviet move in the Mideast, but in actuality to draw attention away from the increasingly disastrous Watergate scandal -- we were just days from the Saturday Night Massacre), but when we went on nuclear alert it was the most frightening moment of my life. To see a nuclear equipped military base move everything -- bombers, fighter jets, missiles -- into a state of readiness was unnerving to say the least, something I hope I'll never experience again. And most likely, I never will.
Because you see, when it was over I called friends and family back in California, to ask what they'd felt about this event. And none of them knew about it, or if they did they had no concept what had occurred. I realized then that, in the nuclear age, the difference between the Home Front and the Front Line is but a degree of perception. If you know it's happening, you're part of the war. If you don't, you could just be a casualty waiting to happen.
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