In late October 1962, as Russian ships carrying missile parts approached American warships blockading Cuba, I sat in a movie theater at Kagnew Station, a small U.S. Army post in Asmara, Eritrea, waiting to see if my country was going to war. I was an Army dependent, a serviceman’s wife, with a sleepy toddler in my lap and a mounting sense of dread.
The theater was crowded that night, filled with enlisted men, officers, and dependents waiting for the news that would determine their futures and perhaps the fate of the world.
My husband had been stationed in Africa for a year and a half and I had arrived with our young daughter just five months before. By this time, we were used to being so far from home, but it was strange to think that the comfortable suburban neighborhoods we had come from, in the Northeast Corridor between Washington and New York, were far more perilous places at that moment than the African city where we lived now with an armed guard outside at night.
Our off-post ground-floor apartment was on a relatively busy street, and we felt perfectly safe there; the guard was just part of the deal. Almost every building in that part of Asmara had either a guard or high walls with shards of glass or razor wire on top. I liked the guard better than living behind razor wire; he seemed like a nice man and was a solid, reassuring presence sitting in the dusty courtyard every night with his beat-up rifle.
That night, though, we wanted to be with other Americans while we waited to see what the Russian ships would do when they reached the blockade. There were Russian missiles in Cuba that could easily reach the United States. The threat of nuclear war seemed very real.
As I recall, the customary newsreel that night was about the latest provocation in Berlin, a patriotic piece about the strength of the post war Western alliance. Then came the feature film, which I cannot remember at all. What I do remember is the tension inside the theater as we waited for the time when someone, far away, would decide the world’s future. I remember wondering what kind of world my daughter would grow up in, or if anything would ever be the same again.
Several times, the public address system crackled to life, and the audience held its collective breath. Each time, a terse message ensued and a few men quickly left the theater. Finally, the time of the expected confrontation came and went, and the sense of relief was electric. The Russians had backed down, we believed at the time, although it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that.
Fifty-six years later, I wonder how it could be that with so many missile sites in so many countries, the same reckless brinkmanship is still playing out.
Connie Larrabee
Under Pin Hill Road
Editor’s note: The Press welcomes readers’ stories for this column. Send to editor@harvardpress.net.
