Cold War wasn't cold to me
On this day in 1962, American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers was released by the Soviet Union in exchange for Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United States five years earlier. Powers, flying out of Peshawar, Pakistan, and Abel, working his spycraft in New York City, were ultimately exchanged on a bridge spanning what was once the demarcation line in Berlin. For those of us who grew up under the very real and daily threat of nuclear attack, this was a significant event. It is sad that the phrase "Stop, Drop, and Cover" is seared into my brain after all these years.
But that incident was just a drop in the bloody, five-decades-long bucket that was the Cold War. I think that all of the souls lost in China, French Indochina, Malaysia, Korea, Angola, and a score more backwaters across the globe would agree, if only they were here. Not to mention 58,631 of my absent brothers and sisters.