The Cold War (no not the battle against winter)

  My first experience with the Cold War was in 1955.  At the time it was surreal, because I was a little kid and all I knew was; when the air raid alarm went off in school, we were suppose to take cover.  Other then that, I was oblivious, which is the way it should be when you are a little kid.  So the alarm goes off, and we all file out of the class room and line up facing the walls in the hall way on our knees with our heads on the floor covered with our hands and our little butts up in the air.  I was clueless as to what this was all about.  I imagined in my little head that monsters were sauntering down the hall way, passing us by.

  Except for the news on TV, the Cold War seemed very far removed from me.  It didn't localise itself again until 1962 and we had the Cuban Missile Crisis.  There was a great interest in building bomb shelters as the idea that there were Russian missiles in nearby Cuba was very unsettling.
  From 1968 until 1972, I was particularly aware of the Cold War while I was in the Air Force.  During my three years overseas, there was always a constant reminder of enemy threats that reflected in our training and day to day routine.  Especially in Turkey where we were so close to the Soviet border.
  I considered myself fortunate that my time in the military during the Vietnam war never included a tour in SEA (South East Asia), though it came very close to happening, but that is another story.