Some of you know I was in the army. During my time I was stationed at a small base in Germany and we had pershing missles. We were told that we had 15 minutes to get as far away as possible if we ever launched or the russians launched. Needless to say this was cause for concern since every german civilian would be doing the same. I informed the officer in charge that i'd spend those 15 minutes making my peace with God and kissing my ass goodbye. The day John Hinkley shot president Reagan my worst fears almost came true. I had pulled day shift and was watching T.V. when the announcement came over. Our alert horn sounded and folks ran out to the missle pads and I ran downstairs to the signal room and immediately relieved the person on duty (ok I kicked them out) and started copying messages. As the only operator on my team with high enough clearence to decode the messages I found that in the current message the operator I had relieved had miscopied several characters and rather than an alert message she had given our missle team a launch message. I immediately called down to the war room as all hell was breaking loose around me. My team leader was banging on the steel entry door and yelling to have me open it and the captain of the artillery team that controlled the missles was screaming in my ear on the phone. I told him rather unpolitely to shut up (yes there were 2 words in between shut and up)and get down to the signal room ASAP and then got up and let my team leader in with the captain right behind. The team leader wanted to know why I had relieved the other operator and the captain wanted to know what was going on. I showed him the original message as it had been copied and then the rebroadcast I had gotten. I did not want to do this but the vision of Alexander Haig proclaiming he was in charge had me nervous beyond all doubt. My job the rest our stay at the missel site was to teach the operator I had abruptly relieved everything I knew.
