The Cold War had split the world in two. On one side, the USA and its allies; on the other, the Soviet Union and its satellites. Eastern Europe was sealed off behind an iron curtain, and nuclear weapons were trained on both directions. We knew what our job was.
As aircrew, our planes were wired for nuclear weapons, and each crew had a specific target. We had no illusions about coming back. If we bombed Soviet airfields, they would do the same to us. We understood that if the worst came to the worst, we would do our job.
The Soviets were busy flexing their own muscles. They showed off their new bombers, like the B-52, and announced they were expanding aviation production with priority on long-range bombers. But the real pressure was building somewhere else. One small nation in Eastern Europe had had enough.
The Hungarians, pushed to their absolute limit, rose up against their oppressors. For a moment, it looked like the underdogs had won—a nation of ten million had broken free from its massive eastern neighbor. But the celebration didn’t last. Russian forces massed at the border, and all communication with the West was cut off.
We heard a voice giving the news, then the sound of fighting. And then silence. They never came back. In retrospect, I understand why.
My own story starts in Cuba. Like most families there, mine supported Castro at first. He promised change, and after Batista’s regime had murdered 20,000 people in seven years, we wanted change. Castro made an impact almost immediately, but it wasn’t long before Cuba became a communist state.
Relations with the US plummeted. The Americans weren’t innocent in all this, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that life in Cuba became harder. Most of us didn’t see any of the easy money flowing into the capital.
We still did backbreaking work that was mechanized in most other countries but not in Cuba. For many, communism just became a fact of life—until we decided we couldn’t accept it. One day, my grandmother sent word. She was leaving, and we were going with her.
“Never mind that,” she said when I asked about the risks. So we got dressed, left everything behind, and boarded a train heading for the Austrian border. A man took us across a field of corn. I remember the silence, the fear, the hope.
We formed a human chain and carried a baby to safety. The escape wasn’t easy. Many tried to leave East Germany through car fenders, or by any means they could find. Some didn’t make it.
There was a little cemetery with crosses for people shot by East German guards trying to make a bid for freedom. But that didn’t stop us. The Berlin Wall was being completed, and the East German authorities worked feverishly day and night to finish it. The first obvious result was increased tension.
They sealed off the border, and West Berliners who had jobs in the East were told to stay home. The elevated trains were halted. Yet against all odds, we weren’t beaten. When the guards tried to pull one woman back to prison, West Berliners pulled her to a fire net and freedom.
The guards were East German, and they were furious. But we kept voting with our feet. The wall was a weapon, but so was our will.
Life would never be the same, but we had chosen freedom, and that was worth the risk.
