By Patrick F. Cannon

Although he oozes insincerity from every pore, as a politician Donald Trump was right to criticize President Biden for his administration’s abrupt and poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though his own administration had made the deal with the Taliban that made withdrawal inevitable.

            American soldiers needlessly lost their lives, and many of our Afghani friends were abandoned to their fate. Even though they signed up for it, the soldiers found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not for the first time, it made me think about how members of the armed services are hostages to fortune. For example, I was drafted early in 1961; if I had been drafted in 1963, I might well have been sent to Viet Nam.

            As it was, I was in the Army for both the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile crises.  When the East Germans began construction of the Wall in August 1961, I had been stationed for only a couple of months in LaRochelle, France (lucky me; that’s it in the photo). While I worked as a cryptographer in the communications center in La Rochelle itself, we lived at an Army post outside of town. The main Army activity was at the Port of La Pallice, just south of La Rochelle, a main port supplying the Army in Europe. Most of our message traffic involved this activity.

            One of our country’s responses to the wall was to beef up our forces in Europe. As a result, there was a substantial increase in coded message traffic since much of the equipment and material came in through La Pallice. On our own post, several empty buildings were converted to barracks for a National Guard truck battalion that was activated to handle increased truck movements from the port.

            The irony of all this was that, while all this was going on, we were providing signal support for the crew of The Longest Day, which was partially filmed on an island off the coast which had a beach much like Omaha Beach in Normandy. The Army also provided soldiers as extras, during a period when the USSR armed forces in Europe were nearly three times as numerous as NATO! In the end, of course, the crisis subsided, but at least I got to have dinner at a local restaurant where Robert Mitchum was drinking too much wine with members of the movie crew. He amused himself by throwing snail shells at his fellow diners.

            October of 1962 found me stationed with a combat signal company at Godforsaken Fort Irwin, California, in the middle of the Mohave Desert. Our role in wartime would have been to support a corps headquarters. A corps usually consists of at least two divisions. As such, we were loaded onto cargo planes and shipped to Fort Hood, Texas to provide support during maneuvers that would pit one armored division against another.

            Being in the field meant living in tents. One fine morning, after a violent storm, our area was flooded. As we surveyed the flooded tent city, a sergeant came along and said: “Is there a cryptographer who would like to help out at the post?” Feeling the mud under foot, and going against the “never volunteer” dictum, I immediately said “I’ll go!”

            Although it took me a day or so to figure it out, my temporary assignment with the Strategic Army Corps (STRAC) was related to the Cuban missile crisis. I watched President Kennedy’s October 22 television address in a Ft. Hood barracks. By then, the maneuvers had been cancelled and outside I could see tanks being loaded on railroad flat cars. The next day, we started loading our own vans and trucks.

            The main access road ran north to south to the main east-west highway. The Army never tells you what’s happening, so we figured if we turned left at the main gate, we would go to Florida; if right, back to Fort Irwin. We turned right and it took us three full days to get back. By the time we did, the crisis was over.            

            In 1965, when I was out of the Army for over two years and newly married, a bartender I knew who had also been a cryptographer was called back to service. Why him and not me remains a mystery. I confess I was apprehensive for the next couple of years as our troop levels in Viet Nam gradually increased. By the end of 1968, we had two children, and maybe that saved me. If so, thanks Patrick and Beth!

Copyright 2024, Patrick F. Cannon