Thirteen Days, and Counting

I saw the movie “Thirteen Days” Sunday and it sent a shiver of memory through me.

I came out of the theater a little dazed by the dark theme of the film and the cold glare of an afternoon sun, almost relieved that it was a movie and nothing more.

For a few seconds I was a kid who had just seen “Nightmare on Elm Street” and was half afraid that Freddy Krueger was following me into the real world.

The Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which “Thirteen Days” dramatizes, was more than a nightmare. The monster in the world was the threat of nuclear war, and it was very real.

But, I wondered, how many today knew how real it was?

I asked teenagers waiting in line for a different movie if they had any idea what the missile crisis was all about. A few sort of did, but to most it was just something that happened “back then.”

Back then, to the young, is a clump of time that includes everything from the Third Punic War to the death of Elvis Presley.

“History begins,” John Updike once wrote, “where memory ends.” And to those teenagers, with no memory of that crisis, it’s a part of that clump called history, and history is a necessary school subject, not a reality.

Then how come I can still see my youngest daughter, just 7, looking up at me and asking, “Are we going to die?”

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It was at the height of the Cold War. Neighbors were building fallout shelters in their backyards. Children were being taught in school to duck and cover during air raid drills. Satirist Tom Lehrer was singing, “We’ll all go together when we go. . . .”

I was a military writer for the Oakland Tribune and had received Defense Department clearance to visit the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, at the southeastern tip of Cuba. The idea of an American base in a Communist country was a subject I couldn’t resist. It was established by treaty in 1903, and we weren’t about to give it up. I was preparing for the trip, when it was abruptly canceled.

A day later, I found out why.

Suddenly and with heart-stopping reality, we were on the edge of the abyss. President Kennedy announced that the Russians were building missile bases in Cuba and we weren’t going to allow it.

We “quarantined” the island, demanded that Khrushchev remove the long-range weapons already in place and warned that any missile launched against us from Cuba would be considered an attack by the USSR and that we would retaliate in kind.

Two nuclear superpowers, each with the capability of destroying life on Earth, were heading for a showdown. A clock was ticking. We waited.

The impending disaster filled our newspapers, our television news shows, our radio newscasts and our conversations. There was no escaping it. Terror had abruptly become a palpable part of our lives.

It was then that my little Linda, eyes filled with fear and wonderment, asked if we were going to die.

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How do you answer a question like that when the possibility of carnage darkens the world like a winter night? Children shouldn’t have to think about dying. Death is a concept for the old or for men at war, not for 7-year-olds.

Unable to lie or even to sugarcoat the truth, I remember saying simply, “I don’t know.”

A friend had a cabin in the mountains, so we sent our families there. Our wives resisted. We should all be together, they said. But that was not an option. The men would stay, as men should, and die facing the terrible flash and heat of the killer bomb.

What seems in retrospect like false bravado was then a painful goodbye. We truly didn’t know if we would ever see our families again. I don’t cry easily. But I remember my eyes burning with a sadness I had never before experienced.

And, still, we waited.

The hours passed like water dripping from a broken faucet. We thought about what it would be like and how we would withstand agony. We prayed for strength and for the courage to face oblivion. A strange and terrible silence descended on us.

Then it was over.

As quickly as it had begun, the crisis drifted into history. We backed away from the abyss. Our families returned. We laughed the giddy laughter of the relieved and went back to what we were doing when destiny interrupted.

“Thirteen Days” brought it all back. It reminded me, and I remind you, that the abyss is still not far away. And those things we only imagine in the darkest of dreams can very quickly, and with consuming terror, come true.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.