Europe, NATO, and the Pershing Missile Command

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After Vietnam, the Army didn’t send my father into retirement or into a quiet desk job. They sent him into a different kind of war—the Cold War—where the front lines weren’t jungles or rice paddies but political borders, missile sites, and the fragile balance of deterrence that determined whether peace held or dissolved into global conflict.

He traded jungle humidity for European winters, firefights for readiness drills, and the chaotic noise of close combat for the precise discipline of nuclear-era strategy. It was a change of scenery—but not a reduction in importance. In many ways, the stakes were even higher.

When he arrived in Europe, he was embedded within NATO, part of a coalition responsible for countering the Soviet Union’s massive military presence just across the border. The Cold War was a conflict fought in the shadows, through intelligence, readiness, and the silent threat of weapons powerful enough to change the course of history.

His battlefield shifted from the jungles of Vietnam to the structured, high-stakes environment of Cold War Europe, where:

• every alert mattered,
• every readiness check carried weight,
• and every missile on the ground existed not to be launched, but to prevent the Soviets from ever daring to launch theirs.
  

His role involved the Pershing missile system, one of America’s most essential nuclear-capable deterrents. These missiles were not simply weapons—they were strategic balancing points, anchors in a standoff between superpowers where one miscalculation could reshape the world.

Working with Pershing units required officers who were:

• steady under pressure,
• precise in procedure,
• disciplined to the smallest detail,
• and trusted with responsibilities that could not tolerate mistakes.
  

Vietnam had prepared him for this. The stress, the danger, the need to think clearly under pressure—it all translated directly into the demands of Cold War nuclear operations.

The Pershing system had three expectations:
Perfection. Timeliness. Control.
My father met those expectations.

Later in life, when I asked my father about his Pershing missile command, he explained the dual-key launch system—the same setup you see in films. He carried one key, and a subordinate carried the other. Both had to turn simultaneously.

I asked what would happen if one of his men refused. He answered without hesitation. He would draw his service pistol, give one final direct order, and, if the man still refused, eliminate the failure.

He wasn’t exaggerating. That was the training, that was the doctrine, and that was the mindset: orders executed exactly, without delay, without deviation. Perfection. Timeliness. Control.

For the first time, he brought his family with him into military life. Europe offered a stability Vietnam never could:

• predictable base housing,
• American schools,
• commissaries and PX stores,
• local markets and European culture just outside the gates.
  

While the Cold War hummed in the background, families built lives around the rhythm of alerts, field exercises, and command briefings. Unlike his childhood, scattered across wartime deployments, my own father became the stable presence for a time, giving his children years without the fear of incoming fire or sudden base evacuations.

The structure suited him.

The discipline of Cold War readiness was something he understood instinctively.
After surviving Vietnam, almost nothing felt “stressful” anymore.

During this era, Pershing systems were tested and calibrated at multiple sites, including locations in Florida. One of those areas—Cape Canaveral—played a role in his training and operational readiness.

Decades later, that same ground would become his final resting place, at the Cape Canaveral National Cemetery. A symbolic full circle:

he once launched missiles from that soil;

the nation later chose that soil to honor him. He was buried and resides today in Cape Canaveral National Cemetery with honor.

Vietnam forged him; NATO refined him.

He had known chaotic war, where danger came from every direction. Now he lived inside an environment where a single mistake could trigger consequences far larger than his own survival. Both wars demanded discipline. Both required calm leadership. Both shaped him in different ways.

In Vietnam, survival depended on instinct.

In Europe, survival depended on precision.

Unlike the war he had just survived, there were no firefights here, no ambushes, no nighttime explosions—only drills, briefings, and readiness tests. But the tension was there in different forms. The Soviets watched NATO. NATO watched the Soviets. Every movement across the border mattered. Every command mattered. Every alert mattered.

My father rarely spoke of this time either—not because it haunted him the way Vietnam did, but because it didn’t need to be spoken. It was steady. Predictable. Professional. It was the kind of environment where competence mattered more than emotion, where the mission was sustained by reliability and focus.

His time with Pershing missiles and NATO forces gave him something Vietnam never could: stability. It allowed him to recover pieces of himself that war had taken. It allowed him to operate in a world where decisions were structured, where procedures were clear, and where danger came not from ambushes but from the responsibility of nuclear deterrence.

It gave him years where he could breathe.

But even this chapter of life could not fully soften the impact of his combat years. Those wounds—physical, emotional, and psychological—would follow him long after Europe, influencing everything from his marriages to the way he raised his children.