To those who lived during the crisis - Thirteen Days (2001) Discussion

[–] davie4u 14 years ago

My dad was married and in college, with a two-month old daughter. He says he remembers watching the news updates at school and thought he would be drafted for certain.

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[–] retpo 14 years ago

I was 18 at the time. Had just graduated from high school the previous June, and thought "Holy Crap, three months out of high school and I'm about to become cannon fodder."

I know that sounds selfish, but a lot of other guys my age felt the same way.

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[–] retpo 14 years ago

I also remember when I was about 10 years old, the civil defense coming to my school to fingerprint us school children so we could be identified in case we were killed in an atomic blast.

Nobody asked if our fingerprints would be burned off.

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[–] stav-3 14 years ago

After i recommended this film to my dad he told me of his memories of the time. Even though they were only 17-18 at the time and England wasn't directly involved, a Nuclear War was obviously going to involve the whole world so my dad and his mates were having some very earnest discussions about which of the armed services they'd join when things went ka-boom. To this day he distinctly remembers the palpable fear of what might have happened.

Saved the world,
Shagged Marilyn.
Damn, he was good.
RIP JFK.

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[–] jakob3 14 years ago

9 years old--4th grade in NC.
Halfway between Seymour Johnson AFB & Fort Bragg.
Planes screaming over breaking the sound barrier;
air raid drills.
We were scared because parents & teachers could not hide their fear.

My Mom guessed the crisis when JFK developed the "cold" as an excuse
to go back to DC. The Crisis was still a secret, but she told us,
"He has no cold--something bad is happening with Russia (sic)."

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] percommode 14 years ago

Only being about 12 years old at the time, my most enduring memory were the daily prayers in school assembly - this was when the UK was still a Christian nation - and just the seriousness of it all. The prayers were earnest.

The aftermath of JFK's death a year or so later had a greater effect; when our town's soccer team played and a tribute was held prior to the game the silence and the sorrow in the stadium were unbelievable.

History hasn't been kind to him, but he was the man of the hour and came through when it counted.

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[–] Kawada_Kira 10 years ago

History hasn't been kind to him, but he was the man of the hour and came through when it counted.

History has been too kind to Kennedy and extremely unkind to the real man of the hour: Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy was ready to launch WWIII and it was Khrushchev who was trying to make a deal to stop it. Kennedy was making blunt threats ("get out or we bomb you!"), whereas Khrushchev was trying to negotiate. In the end, when Kennedy explicitly threatened to launch a war within two days if the USSR didn't back down, Khrushchev accepted an outrageous deal that humiliated his country and destroyed his career, because unlike Kennedy, Khrushchev was a humble man who put the fate of the world above personal vanity and narrow jingoism. It's because of Khrushchev, and Khrushchev alone, that you and I are here to talk about this today. If the USSR had been led by someone who demanded fair and reasonable terms, the war hawk in Washington would have launched, you would have been killed in a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and I would never have been born.

It's criminal the way history has dumped nothing but sh!t on Khrushchev as though he were the aggressor, when he was merely responding to an extremely threatening state of affairs in which the US had ringed his country with nukes and forced him to find ways to improve its deterrence. It was Khrushchev who wanted to make a deal to prevent war. Kennedy didn't want to negotiate with Khrushchev because he saw the USSR as beneath the US. What he couldn't stand wasn't some "threat" of Soviet attack, which he knew wasn't going to happen, but that a lesser people would have the gall to stand up to him and behave as if they were his equal, imposing an equal balance of power, as if they had the right to put nukes near his country the way he put nukes near theirs. This is the US attitude toward the world, the same attitude the British and French always had. It's the imperial mindset: we're better than you, we're above you, you're not our equal, we lead and you follow.

It was Kennedy, not Khrushchev, who started the crisis. It was Kennedy, not Khrushchev, who threatened war. It was Khrushchev, not Kennedy, who offered a deal and accepted an atrocious compromise even though it destroyed his career and humiliated the country he represented, because unlike Kennedy he put the interests of humanity over his own personal vanity and the short-term interests of the country he led. And it's Khrushchev, not Kennedy, who deserves to be remembered as the hero of the hour and the reason we're here to talk about it today.

 Sig under construction 

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[–] urciolo 14 years ago

I read this book after I saw the movie. I was about 15 at the time the crisis took place and I believed that when JFK told the Russians that putting missiles in Cuba would be considered an act of aggression and the U.S. would react accordingly, they backed off. I can’t believe that I wasn’t aware of the world wide tension that played out after this speech. In retrospect, I’m kind of glad I didn’t sweat it out.

Cats are delicate dainty animals who suffer from a variety of ailments ... except insomnia.

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[–] etsis 10 years ago

What are your memories of it?

October 22, the day of Kennedy's televised address, was my tenth birthday. I remember one of my birthday gifts was a globe of the world, and as I watched his address I was finding Cuba on it and trying to figure out how far Cuba was from where I was (Chicago). I was scared, to be honest. I remember wondering if I would be alive to see my eleventh birthday.

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[–] TheFonz79 10 years ago

My father was 13 years old at the time living in southeast Louisiana. He told me a few things that he specifically remembers. He remembers a several trains passing through their small town, carrying tanks and artillery heading for what I assume was Florida. His father, my grandfather, was principal of the local junior high school he remembers having to help my grandfather inventory supplies at the school and several other locations in town. He remembers going with my grandparents to a town hall meeting called the day after Kennedy addressed the nation. He also remembers no school. All-in-all I got the impression from him that he was not scared, but anxious...and perhaps a little fascinated and excited by it all.

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[–] fanaticita 9 years ago

Very scary time! I don't remember that much about it except that people really were scared, buying all the food off the shelves in food markets just like the film showed.

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[–] greenleafie 9 years ago

I was 11. I was only generally aware of the "cold war"- duck-and-cover drills, the effects of radiation, bomb shelters, the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that sort of thing, but I have no specific memory of the missile crisis. I was a child, concerned with kid-stuff. I didn't watch the news or follow politics at all. If my parents were concerned about it, they never let me know.

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[–] rikkirat 8 years ago

I was 8 at the time and frankly I don't remember anything about it. Didn't even hear about it until history class several years later. Don't even remember parents talking about it at all at the time. I think my parents purposely kept my sister and me in the dark on purpose so we wouldn't be scared.

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[–] alaskasassenach 8 years ago

I was 12 years old, living on the north shore near Boston; I remember being told to be quiet when the news come one...and there were several break-in news during those days when there were new details. There weren't 24/7 talking heads guessing and blowing things up, making things worse like now. We kids knew there was a problem with Russia/Cuba and the parents were very tense. There were evacuation drills, talk of bomb shelters, and advertisements to tune into conelrad if the regular radio/TV stopped. I also remember, perhaps in a different scenario, seeing Khrushchev on TV pounding his shoe on the UN podium saying 'we will bury you.'

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