It happened 61 years ago this month, but there’s not been an October since that I don’t think about it.
After six decades, it’s still a bone-chilling, frightening thought. At the time, it was the apocalyptic “mother” of all nightmare events.
During the period of 13 days (October 15-28) humanity teetered on the brink of nuclear destruction.
Recalling its history can still be gut-wrenching. Living through it was tantamount to a foretaste of hell.
A quick historic refresher: the crises came about when an American U-2 spy plane with recon photo gear spotted the building of what were analyzed to be Soviet missile bases in Cuba, only 90 miles from the Florida Keys.
The Kennedy Administration (that’s John F, of course) quickly assessed that such bases would install missiles that would be pointed US-ward. And they would be nuclear-armed.
To confirm the imminent potential for nuclear war, American spy planes also took photos of Russian cargo ships steaming toward Cuba with loads of such missiles.
The Soviets saw this joint Cuba-Russian movement as retaliation for the United States’ placing ballistic missiles in the UK in 1958, and in Turkey and Italy in 1961.
President Kennedy, after consultation with his top military and civilian advisors, ordered a naval “quarantine”; on October 22 to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba, a less aggressive course of action than a “declaration of war.”
Using the term “quarantine” rather than “blockade” (an act of war by legal definition,) the United States announced it would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the weapons already in Cuba be dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called the quarantine “an act of aggression propelling humankind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.”
On October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy offering to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by the US not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a second letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.
Officially, the Kennedy administration accepted the terms of the first message and ignored the second letter entirely.
After days of tense negotiations, a publicly announced agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev that the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to verification by the United Nations. In exchange, the US agreed to not invade Cuba.
Secretly, the United States agreed with the Soviets that it would dismantle all of the Jupiter missiles which had been deployed to Turkey for potential use against the Soviet Union. (There has been debate on whether Italy was included in the agreement as well.)
U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington on October 28, and the crisis ended when Khrushchev called back the Soviet ships and the world let out a deep breath
If you were alive at the time, you would remember the world’s collective horror and an equally collective feeling of hopelessness. You would recall the “duck and cover” drills, scrambling under your school desks. If you were in a Catholic school, you would be reciting the Rosary while under them.
You also would remember watching the family, small screen black-and-white television set seeing and hearing somebody telling you what your chances were of living until Christmas.
Many people did not go to work. Many stayed secluded in their houses. And many constantly kept their eyes on the sky when they were outdoors.
The testing of air raid sirens echoed their eerie sounds at various times of the day and night. You couldn’t help but see neighbors converting their basements (or cellars, as most were known at the time) into bomb shelters, stocking them with canned foods, bottled water, and other basic foods of sustenance.
You also may have filled a few five or 10-gallon gasoline cans and put them handy to the car, if you or your family had one, so that you could drive into who-knew-where in case the egg you called Earth cracked and crumbled. Panic may not have reached its peak but fear certainly had.
It was later learned that a secret deal had been made between President Kennedy and Khrushchev (a deal that Kennedy’s top advisors, including his brother, Robert, adamantly opposed.).
In addition to recalling this crisis (called by some “The Missiles of October), one could also wonder if, eventually, the Free World (and, just where is that?) could again be facing a similar apocalyptic moment of drone, biologic, cyber or AI warfare with Iran (and/or other fanatical enemies of Israel,) or North Korea, or China or Putin’s Russia!
One also could appropriately ask how Joe Biden would respond. Whose advice would he seek? To whom would he listen?
Would he be Kennedy-esque, Trump-ish, or Barry Goldwater-like? (If you can’t recall who he was, check out your nearest American History book.)
Perhaps these questions, or ones like them, also could be asked to the Biden sycophant near you who is running for office in the upcoming municipal election season. After all, it is October again.
************
Finally, nobody asked, but you need to know that there is a scammer or hacker lurking in your digital neighborhood if you receive an email from Comcast or any other service or business that requests your reply by warning you that “an unauthorized device has recently attempted to sign into your account.”
To paraphrase Nike, “just delete it!”
The Last Word: Good day, good luck, and good news tomorrow!
Comments invited to mainlinebanter@verizon.net
