The Abyss by Max Hastings

Author:Max Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

The president had hoped to address the American people next day, 21 October. The demands of the planners and requirements of the military made it necessary to push back this timetable by twenty-four hours, though by now America’s precarious silence about the missiles was close to breaking point. Sunday morning brought the White House a stroke of good fortune, albeit a sorry one for peace in the sub-continent: the world’s front pages were captured and dominated by a major armed clash on India’s border with China, initiated by the Chinese but provoked by Indian aggression, in which Mao Zedong’s troops drove forward on two fronts. Informed reporters and editors on the East Coast, however, recognized that something was also up closer to home. The Washington Post main headline read: ‘MARINES MOVES IN SOUTH LINKED TO CUBA’ – here was a first earnest of the beginnings of the US invasion deployment. Both Walter Lippmann and Joe Alsop, the nation’s best-informed political columnists, knew that trouble was a-coming, involving Soviet nuclear weapons and Cuba. White House press secretary Pierre Salinger called both the Post and New York Times, to request that the titles held off the story through Monday. In those patriotic days, they did so; Salinger’s call was the first the Times knew about it.

That Sunday had been scheduled as a liberty day ashore for much of the crew of the carrier Essex, anchored off shore in Guantánamo Bay. At 0330, however, the broadcast order ‘Reveille, Reveille, all hands!’ echoed through its vast cavernous spaces atop and below. Once under way, Essex remained at sea on continuous operations directed towards the Crisis until 26 November, flying off patrol and anti-submarine aircraft.

Meanwhile ashore the US Cuban base activated Operation Quicklift, as flights were informally known, to evacuate dependants ahead of the president’s broadcast. ‘This is not a drill,’ began the officers who briefed wives and other family members. Frances Glasspoole, teenage daughter of a US naval officer, said of life in the enclave: ‘We did not have a sense of what was going on in the world. Our news was filtered. The base newspaper was a little typewritten newsletter. The television station didn’t come on until 7 p.m., and it was just old re-runs of The Ed Sullivan Show and I Love Lucy.’ JFK had been president for almost two years, yet Glasspoole had never heard his voice on the air waves. After families quit the base, the doors of their quarters were marked with a crude daubed ‘V’, for ‘vacated’. Sailors were detailed to care for abandoned pets. Some frightened women left clothes still in their washing machines, food on stoves. Successive groups flew out on planes that brought in arms and ammunition, while most travelled on four ships of the US Navy, bound for Hampton Roads. In all, 2,700 civilians were whisked out of harm’s way, soon to be replaced by an additional three battalions of Marines.

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