MILITARY memories or Veteran Stories I’d like to share:
The memory: The decommissioning of what was then the last US tactical nuclear missile system stationed in Europe. I was privileged to host representatives of the military forces of the then recently created Russian Federation visit our facility, where they observed us systematically cut the launch rails on our missile launch vehicles with acetylene torches, rendering them permanently inoperable. (Meanwhile, other US military personnel were taking part in similar observations of Russian soldiers destroying their equivalent weapons systems somewhere in Russia). That same night, a large number of US Army Chinook helicopters arrived at our highly secure nuclear warhead storage facility in the German forest, uploading the warheads and flying them to an unknown location. At that moment, a chapter in the Cold War closed. And I was there to see it. Fast-forward to now, when we have all observed Vladimir Putin resurrect the Cold War with his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference and his subsequent military and covert actions around the globe. History is well on its way to repeating itself.
