My parents' and grandparents' generations remember where they were when they heard about President Kennedy's assassination, and my (American) grandparents remembered hearing about Pearl Harbor. My generation's seminal moments were the Challenger disaster and 9/11.
Challenger. January 28, 1986. I was leaving Thayer Hall at school and heading back to the barracks after class before lunch. Another cadet was coming towards me; his head was drooping down, he was staring at the ground. At West Point we never looked down as we walked; we were trained to walk with our heads up, if for no other reason than not to miss saluting an officer (and getting punished for same). Plebes greeted all upperclassmen they passed ("good morning, sir", or "good morning, ma'am"), and by sophomore year everyone greeted everyone (even if it was just "hey", whether you knew the cadet you were walking past or not). But the guy walking towards me, his head was hanging so low that he might have been looking backwards. I'd never seen such a thing, clearly something was wrong. I asked, "What's up?" and he replied, "The shuttle blew up."
That's where I was when Challenger was destroyed, on the walkway between the south doors of Thayer Hall and the road. It was 33 years ago today.
That day I was in stationed in Germany. I had taken my platoon of four tanks to the local maneuver area just outside the town of Aschaffenburg to work on tactical movement for the day. We rolled out at 0530 and at 1730 we got permission to move back to the kaserne not earlier than 1830. We had to roll out before the German rush hour and return afterward. Can't be rolling 63 tons of metal on the German roads when they are full of Mercedes & BMWs. As I was waiting to give the order to move out I see my Company Commander's Jeep coming down the road at breakneck speed. He pulls up to my tank and climbs up to tell me words to the effect of; "The shuttle's just exploded, you need to keep you platoon out here on standby just in case." My reply was "Yeah, right, what's up Sir?"
ReplyDeleteThe 'just in case' was that someone in the chain of command, I don't know how high up, thought the Challenger may have been sabotaged by the Russians and all soldiers in the field had to stay there until further notice. Luckily cooler heads prevailed and eventually we were allowed to roll back after a long day at about 2000.
My first battery commander had been a Nike-Herc nuke warhead babysitter in Germany. Any time someone on the other side even sneezed....
ReplyDeleteI was at the ROTC lounge and one of the captain's came in, "You won't believe this, but the Challenger blew up..." We didn't have a TV, but I knew the guys in the AF ROTC did. I walked over and they were showing it.
ReplyDeleteI was in class (1st grade) watching it happen on TV. I was rather confused about everything and didn't quite understand it until the (shocked) adults explained it to us.
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