[hoagy62]

Got a question for you...not to say you were wrong or anything, because those years you speak of WERE indeed dangerous.

Have you ever heard of Able Archer ‘83? Many consider that to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets were so freaked out at Reagan and what they THOUGHT he might do that they were sure something would happen. Andropov was Soviet Premier at the time, and...him being formerly the head of the KGB and all...he was focusing heavily on ANY signs that the West might attack (look up ‘Project RYAN’). This was nothing more than an exercise and it almost resulted in nuclear war.

An apocryphal story from around that time: (This incident happened at a Pershing storage site near the Pershing HQ. I heard about this a few days after it happened.) When the Pershing 2’s first got to the units, the soldiers were training on them to make sure they knew how all the pieces fit. The lieutenant in charge over this one platoon decided to stand a missile up...with NO warhead, just the missile body...to make sure the soldier’s work was done right. Within minutes of the missile being stood up, a frantic call was made to the storage facility from HQ to “get that @#$%^& missile down!”. What happened?

Understand...it was a cloudy, slightly rainy day. HOW they knew a missile was standing, I don’t know...but I heard later that the Soviets along the entire East German border went on high alert within minutes of that missile being erected.

It was widely made known afterwards that you do NOT stand a missile up for any reason without express permission from people WAY high up in the chain of command. I imagine that lieutenant had his butt in a sling for quite a while.

[Cold Heat]

Yeah, lol...I only heard that some event happened.. During my tour, we had some interesting exchanges as well. There were some exchanged rifle fire...across the border with east Germany from time to time, and yes the Rooskies were sensitive to movements. The place was crawling with agents. I am pretty sure they telegraphed our convoy movements just to avoid misunderstandings. I was even approached at one time. I reported it..they put the place off limits...lol I think we are still crawling with agents. Some of them may be posting here on this Ukraine business. Anyway it sure seems so. The US has been a haven for foreign agents since WWII. In fact the Russians stole all the plans for out first nuke. They built their own and tested it. but they did not have any bomber big enough and with the range to deliver it.

So they stole the plans for our B-29 and that was their first intercontinental bomber.

[Mark17]

Have you ever heard of Able Archer ‘83?

I did not hear about it till long after I had retired, but I was in Germany from 80 to 84. Unfortunately for us, we were on the wrong side of the Rhine as well. It is scary. We did not have the proverbial clue what was going on.