Bomb Shelters, Duck and Cover, Emergency Boxes and October

By Linda Kay

I was 8 in 1962. I didn't know it was a bomb shelter. I thought it was just a basement like at my grandma's. I never got to play in it until October of 1962. Then I got to "play" down there with my mom and my brother and 3 other families. We were stationed at Loring AFB, ME. Our quarters were L shaped multiplexes and every fourth house had a shelter to be shared by four families. The access to it was in our house.

Dad was called to the flight line by the alert siren and took his B-4 bag with him. I knew he did alert duty every so often so this time I didn't think it would be any different until Mom got out the Emergency Box. You know the one we all had with C-rats, blankets, batteries, flashlights, sterno. She told my brother and I to start filling the jugs we had for emergencies with water. Being a bright little girl, I knew to do as I was told. Also I knew not to ask 'pesky' questions. We had practiced this routine before like other kids have fire drills.

I knew something was up. We had been having more Duck and Cover drills at school. There was more talk of obeying our moms while dads were away. Stuff like that sets a kid's radar off.

The alert siren went off again. It wasn't a practice drill. It was the REAL THING this time. We waited for the other families to arrive then we all went to the basement. We kids just thought it was a game. We were going to finally get to play in The Dungeon and my brother, who was the oldest at 14, continued to let us live in the game. We played Hide-N-Seek and told ghost stories. We got to eat the C-rats, which we thought was cool. We were going to get to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor like one big underground camp out.

None of us kids realized the seriousness of the situation until the next morning. We were done with that adventure and now wanted to go outside and play. Someone's mom told us we couldn't go back upstairs until the alert siren blew again. Confusion and fear. Lots of it. Our moms and my brother did the best they could to calm us down. This wasn't a game anymore and we were really scared now and were waiting for the explosions to begin at any second. We didn't have a radio. It wouldn't have worked anyway.

Three days after we descended to the shelter the alert siren blew the all clear and we could go home. Dad came home later and we all hugged. During that time, I began to get a new respect for my mom watching the way she handled herself during the crisis.

It was years later that I understood it was all about Russians, Cuba and missles aimed at strategic points in the US. But it was THAT day I began to lose my innocence of childhood.

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