Smooth Operators

Eligible, not too stupid
Intelligible, and cute as cupid
Knowledgeable, but not always right
Salvageable, and free for the night
--A Chicken With It's Head Cut Off,
Magnetic Fields

Magnificent desolation
--Buzz Aldrin, on viewing the moon
_______________

The year was 1969 and this happened sometime around the first moon walk.

Little 1 LT Ranger takes over the 8th Division Advanced Marksmanship Unit after being reassigned from an Infantry Battalion with feet planted firmly on the ground, sort of, when one day a full Division alert was called. The entire ball game rolled out to forward designated defensive fighting positions.

Not knowing nor having a Standard operating procedure, Ranger was clueless as to the 8th Division's AMU alert responsibilities, since we were not a tactical unit. So it is off to Division G-3, whom we worked for, to see what needed doing. Ranger drove from Mannheim and was admitted to the G-3 area at Div. HQ, Bad Kreuznach.

Here is where it gets weird. Everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off because no one could find the Nuclear Weapons Employment Plan. Moreover, the actual weapons were being deployed down to appropriate Unit level. Keeping in mind that during full alert one never knew if it was real or simply practice.

Again: the Nuclear Weapons Employment Plan went missing. But no sweat -- 'twas just a practice run after all.

After witnessing this, Ranger slipped quietly away and never asked again what the AMU should do during alert. The G-3 had bigger eggs to crack, and the AMU never mustered for alerts.

As an aside, the G-3 was a senior Lieutenant Colonel who retired a LT General. Naturally, a West Pointer. Who should sweat over a few loose nukes? Ranger never lost a Top Secret weapons plan, and he did not retire an LTG.

The point? Citizens assume the military is responsibly handling nuclear weapons, and this is not always the case. The U.S. should worry and fret about the nukes that we have, rather than obsess over nukes that the Iranians don't have.