We knew what the missiles could do. We did not know what they had
in them. That was need-to-know, and we did not need to know. Our
job was the radar. You had a sector, you had a target, you called
it up the chain. The chain decided. I ran the console from sixty-one
to sixty-five, four to twelve, three days on and one off. In the
winter the wind came off the water and the little heater under
the console kept your feet warm and nothing else. The Cuba year
we didn't sleep much. Nobody talked about it either.
When the deactivation came in seventy-four I was already home in
Highlands. The story about nuclear warheads was in the paper before
the eighties. My wife looked up from the article and said, so you
knew? And I said, no. I honest to God did not know.