OMG Off Spain

It was my birthday 1966.  The family all went to Basle for the winter carnival - my favorite!, to celebrate.  Okay it is really my and my mother's birthday, we were born on the same day and knowing my father this was really for her but I will claim it!  :^)

On January 17, we headed back for home, up in the little notch where Belgium, Luxembourg and France are all joined together.  But, something was wrong on the Swiss - French border, Father was requested to leave the car and go to the guard shack.  Very odd.

When he came back, he was really in a state of agitation.  Seems the US had lost a B-52 over Spain, equipped with four Hydrogen Bombs!  Three had been found, one was missing.  Nothing like one of your toys going missing on you.  (Not even getting into the whole discussion of how on Earth he and Edvard were able to justify what they had created!)

Father, faced turned from camera

So, we had a very quiet ride home, were dropped off and father headed for the nearest NATO base for an emergency flight to Spain - in winter - life is really tough.  The school was all a buzz over this.  News leaks out of Upper Hayford let us know that the bomb had been found almost immediately - but the idiots were going to leave it where it lay because the searchers had broken military search routine in finding it.  Wasn't finding it the whole point?  But it lay another 9 weeks until it was re-discovered, and then could be properly raised.  Father was so angry when he got home, you have no idea.....  I have no idea if any of his complaints against the wackos responsible had any effect.

I know from my secret readings in father's books, that things were not going to go well for those poor villagers whom had been contaminated by plutonium when the three bombs, which hit ground, had blown their conventional detonators.  I remember at the time reading in the newspaper of villagers kicking sand on the bombs to put the fires out; posing for pictures sitting on the bomb casings, and living life as usual - in a contaminated environment.  I never did see any reports come out on their life expectancies or deaths in public sources.  Just not news I guess when you have shots of President Johnson holding up his beagles by their ears or whatever.  And, I try not to even search on such subjects on the internet lest I draw undesired attention.

Prior to this I had always held the US military in high esteem.  But, if you were so anal as to "stick" to a scheduled search and then reprimand those whom broke protocol to find what you were looking for - doesn't this point to a significant problem within the power structure of the military?  Until January 1966, I had wanted a career in the US military, like my father, but now I started to watch, listen, remember and think on what I was hearing.....