Poetry, Part Sixteen

From January 1974 until June of 1978, while I was stationed at Minot Air Force Base, I went on 235 alerts during my missile tour of duty. The first hundred or so were on the old 36-hour schedule where a crew spent 12 hours underground, then 12 hours or so upstairs, and finally the last 12 hours or so back downstairs in the LCC before the relief crew arrived. Under the old schedule, we could be on the day shift or the night shift, the night shift departing base at 20:00 hours. Under the 24-hour schedule, we always drove out and back in the morning after the predeparture briefing at 08:00, weather permitting. Obviously, the following poem was written during a return to base after a 36-hour tour that ended when it was getting dark.

Because Minot was a missile, bomber, and interceptor base, it would be one of the primary targets of a Soviet missile first strike were a nuclear war to break out.

Returning to Base, Minot AFB

At most a smear of lasting glow
dims as an angle off the surfacing earth.
As on nights when I walked fire watch,
to protect the training of Marines,
still enough active war endured back then
for me not to see.

Now, coming toward this northern outlay of lights,
I know ours is a leisurely defense,
with none of the arrogance of a top target.

Never has there been this distance between enemies.
But the time for attack is short.
And this long and fatal involvement
becomes an ease for all of us to deceive.

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