My Grandfather's Service in the Cold War, 1997, by Matthew Schneeman

From MemoryArchive

Who: Matthew Schneeman
What: Cold War Story from grandfather
When: 1997
Where: Minnesota

I had always known that my grandfather had been in the cold war as a bombardier, it was common family knowledge. I never really talked to my grandfather about his time in the war because I figured that it was just an old topic for him. My family is very large so we tend to get tired of repeating the same stories. One summer day I was up north in Minnesota where my grandfather has a piece of land. I was twelve I believe and I was felt very cool because my parents weren’t around and it was just me, my grandpa, my cousins, and Northern Minnesota. We were having a fine time, everything was normal, and I didn’t have any worries. At night after we had eaten dinner my grandpa started talking to me about one memory of his time in the service. I always had thought that he had had a seemingly mild time in the army and nothing much more came of it. But he told me a tale that really shook me up. He told me that during the war he and his crew would be put on call for long periods of time. They weren’t told for what necessarily and then they would be dismissed, but they were armed with a nuclear bomb so he figured that they were sent up to do just that. This story really hit me hard when I was twelve and still makes me tingle a bit because it's wired thing when your grandfather was so close to bringing the cold war into a hot war. I’m glad that my grandpa didn’t have to drop that bomb; it’s an ugly situation.