How has war or the threat of war affected you?

Question

Growing up in central Canada during the Cold War was a scary time and place. Tensions between the USSR and the USA were coming to a head the late 70s/80s. Neighbourhoods in my city were dotted with these ugly green towers with sirens on top which would warn us when a Nuclear Holocaust erupted between America and the USSR. One of these towers was right across the road from me and theyd test it once per week and believe me, it would scare the sh*t out of you when it went off.

You see, if the Soviets fired nuclear missiles at the US they would be intercepted and shot down by the Americans over Canada, thus killing us. Every day I'd come home from school and the TV would run these "tests" on what to do in the event of Nuclear War between the US and USSR. I used to have nightmares about Nuclear War when I was 10-12 years old. Although I'm not emotionally scarred from it, my friends and I were talking the other day about how odd it was no one really talks about this period anymore.

Answer 1

I was serving in the RAF between 1955 and 1973 and the threat of war certainly seemed very close to me. On the only occasion I was actually threatened I was flying as a crewman on board a helicopter delivering artillery ammunition to a gun position where Royal Artillery were firing, and being fired back at, at Clandestine Communist Insurgents in Malaysia. I noted that there were puffs of dust rising from the Landing Zone we were approaching and when I asked the pilot what they were he said, "Mortar Bombs exploding" I can tell you that on that day I discovered what colour adrenaline was.

Answer 2

I was a schoolboy when the second world war broke out, We all had air raid shelters in our gardens and when the sirens sounded we had to leave the house and go into the shelter and wait for the "all clear" to sound. Some nights we were there all night in the dark listening to the sounds of the anti-aircraft guns firing and the bombs exploding in the city. At school the shelters were long concrete tunnels under the school yard. When it got too bad we all set off and walked out of the city to our grandparents house in a village about fifteen miles away. We were pushing prams, and it seemed to be a very long way and quite frightening to a ten year old. The question seems to be from Canada and as I am from the U K the circumstances are slightly different but the effect on a young mind seems to have been similar. Later on when I was 18 years old I was called up for "National Service" in the British army for two years. This was at the time of the Korean War. Nothing seems to change over the years. The saying that "there will always be wars or rumours of wars" seems to be true.

Answer 3

I'm very lucky in that i've had a life free of that sort of bizzare experience. By the time i was ten the cold war was winding down. I'm English and live in the North which didn't really see any terrorist acts during the Northern Ireland nonsense, although the IRA did try to blow up a gas tower, and there is a relatively small Muslim community so tensions aren't as high as elsewhere.
I have friends who live in London who get nervy travelling on the underground and are generally nervous about when the next attack will come but while feeling sympathetic i can't really know how they feel.