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Confessions of a Nuclear Bomb Backpacker On October 9th, 1965, my 20th birthday and the year of the start of the big call-ups of the young men of my time that would feed the growing slaughter that was the Vietnam War, I received my greetings from the U.S. Army. Up to that day, I was the dangling man described in a novel by Saul Bellow, my life in limbo waiting for the inevitable summons. Not being political about the war (nor patriotic, for that matter) I accepted my fate and answered the call like a sheep frolicking in the field who reluctantly, but dutifully, obeys the master’s command to come home to the confines of the cote. Inexplicably, my journey through basic and advanced training did not lead me to the steamy jungle war, but ended in the Cold War that was Europe. More inexplicably, I volunteered to be a member of an atomic demolition munitions (ADM) platoon whose mission was to place, arm and detonate small nuclear bombs when it was time. Instead of being issued a rifle upon entering the service, I was issued an atomic bomb. I was part of a four-man squad, four squads to a platoon that included a squad leader, two assemblers and a manual man who was responsible for security, transportation, maintenance, deployment and any and all contingencies which could keep us from carrying out our mission. These were small sub-kiloton bombs to be used for tactical purposes to impede Warsaw Pact Armies from advancing into West German territory in the event of a war. Their main purpose was not to kill (although there would be plenty of that) but to slow down the advance of enemy armor units from the blast effects of cratering, tree blowdown, pulverization of bridges and autobahns, river diversions and the nuisance that came with radiation. These bombs were light enough for us to carry on our backs using a backpack harness, deliver it to a ground zero, arm it, set a timer and get the hell out of there. Why would anyone volunteer to do this? Well, how cool would it be running around playing with atomic bombs? I attained a secret clearance and went to a NATO school located on the side of a mountain rimming the picturesque village of Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps to learn my trade. My folks back home only knew that I was stationed in Hanau, Germany as part of an engineer battalion. My platoon led an elitist existence separated from the muck and mire of everyday life in an armor division. The only time we went out in the field was once a year to recon our potential targets near the East German Border. Staying in local guesthouses, we would go out during the day, familiarize ourselves with our targets and reevaluate them for worthiness. We would return to the guesthouse in the evening, enjoy a fine meal of wienershnitzel and beer and have fun with the barmaids. At our target areas, we could look into East Germany with binoculars, and East German soldiers would be looking right back at us. We would wave to them, and they would wave back. Oh, what a crazy cold war! There were some of us who were book people, readers of the likes of Sartre, Camus and Kafka, who gathered most nights at the guesthouse across the street from our kaserne. We would get drunk, rant against the army, the Vietnam War and the government, stagger back to our barracks and get up in the morning and go to work. I now wonder what Camus would have made of the absurdity of it all. Not once in all our philosophical ravings did the morality of what we were doing ever come up. It never occurred to us what young men (boys, really) fresh out of adolescence, were doing with access to nuclear bombs. Nor did it occur to us that the odds were slim, if not zero, that we would survive our mission. Talk about your ultimate suicide bomber! Nor did it occur to us how there could be any scenario, other than that the localized use of small tactical nukes in West Germany would not escalate into an all-out nuclear conflagration. Our philosophical search went no deeper than the liter glasses of beer in front of us. We were smug, immature egotists playing the game without questioning it, having a high old time in a beautiful country we were so ready to destroy. I spent nineteen months in Germany. On the day before I rotated back to the States, there was a formation of my platoon. I was presented with a memento of appreciation for the work I did. It was a Zippo cigarette lighter (you know the one, made famous in photos of soldiers in Vietnam using them to ignite thatched roofs of huts as they burned down villages to save them) engraved with my name, platoon and a mushroom cloud. I went home, packed away the lighter with the rest of my service memorabilia and went on with the rest of my life ... until ... ...until ... almost ten years ago, in what can only be described an act of grace, I ended up at St. Malachy Parish. Browsing a used bookstore (it’s always about books), I came upon Fr. John McNamee’s books, bought, read and was touched by them, and sought out this special church and extraordinary congregation. I replaced the existentialist authors with Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan and Howard Zinn, joined the Catholic Peace Fellowship, had my consciousness raised and finally grew up. I started doing retreats at Kirkridge Center in the Poconos with Liz McAlister and Dan Berrigan. A few years ago at one of these retreats, Philip Berrigan, recently let out of prison, was there. I had only met him once before, but his effect on me was profound. The example of his life, his participation in Plowshares actions, his total of eleven years in prison for these actions, and his personal passion, the abolishment of nuclear weapons he deemed a supreme evil, I found awe-inspiring. Because I knew he would be at the retreat, I brought my Zippo lighter with me, renounced my involvement with nuclear weapons, and as a symbolic gesture of the closure of that part of my life, threw the lighter into a pond on Kirkridge property. At the time, no one knew that Phillip was carrying the cancer that would take his life three months later. I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to do this in the presence of this great man of peace. Thus, my pilgrim’s progress ended with a new beginning. On August 6th, 1945 a nuclear bomb was used to destroy the city of Hiroshima. A few days later, Nagasaki would suffer the same fate. These bombs were physically so big, they had to be moved around with great effort, by many people. Twenty years later, during my service time, these bombs were small and uncomplicated enough to be transported and deployed by one person with a bit of schooling. Forty one years later, a new generation of young men and women have been trained on even smaller bombs (the big ones are, also, still out there), designed for more specific types of targets. There is a government policy that justifies using them in certain situations. This does not bode well, lets say, for tunnels in the mountains of Afghanistan, uranium enrichment complexes in Iran, or for that matter, Fifth Avenue in downtown Manhattan. God help us! John Wanenchak |