The Blue Room

In eighth grade, during 1963-64 at Dundalk Junior High, one of our teachers took us on a field trip to Fort Meade, where her husband was a captain in the U.S. Army. He served as officer in charge of “The Blue Room.”

It was a pleasantly lit room with all blue lights –no white lights – and lots of radar screens and Army operators steadily watching them. And, a clear thick glass wall with a soldier on the other side, quickly and deftly (quite amazing, actually) writing backwards on his side of the glass. The soldier’s words were seen frontwards on our side, but then just as quickly, he erased some of the words, and then deftly again began writing some more stuff backwards that we could all read frontwards from where we were standing.

First, it was explained to us school kids that blue lights are the easiest artificial light on the eyes and that is best for the Army guys spending long hours everyday carefully watching the radar screens. Those soldiers were keeping track of the radar blips of every airplane flying in the Baltimore-Washington flight corridor.

Then we were told about the guy writing backwards. It was then that we noticed several soldiers seated behind the backwards-writing soldier and the seated soldiers were talking on telephones. The captain said that the guys on the phones were talking to air traffic controllers at (what was then) Friendship Airport. The air traffic controllers were steadily telling the men on the phones the flight numbers and other pertinent info of planes that the air traffic controllers were in contact with. The men on the phones were telling the man writing backwards what the info was, so that he could write it on the glass wall for the radar operators on the other side of the clear wall to see and compare with what they saw as blips on their radar screens.

Hence, any flying plane not double-checked would be considered a possible enemy aircraft sneaking around, spying, or ready to attack Americans. It was right then that I noticed next to the closest radar operator man's hand sat a four-inch wide, red, translucent, plastic, double-hinged, safety cover over top of a three-inch wide, solid black plastic button that had “FIRE” written in white on it.

It was obvious that all the radar operator had to do was to move his hand a few short inches, flip that double-hinged, red, translucent, plastic, safety cover off the top of that black plastic button with “FIRE” on it and he could push the button down with the heel of his hand and shoot a missile up into the air.

I was so stunned at seeing it - THE BUTTON! – one that could begin a war. It so readily accessible (I could have reached over and very easily had fired the missile myself) that I blurted out, "You can push down on that button right now and shoot off a missile?!?

The Army guy sitting there in the chair, looking at the radar screen, glanced up into my quite animate, adolescent face. Looking back, he was a relatively young man himself. He smiled rather sheepishly, and with an ever-so-slight nod of his head, and in a restrained, mild voice, he said, "Yes."

I knew right then and there that he did not want to ever have to flip that red safety button off and push down on that black “FIRE” button. Everyone in that room was feeling the exact, precise, same train of thought as the young soldier by THE BUTTON.

Then the Captain told us eighth graders something I never forgot. He told us that the missiles controlled by The BUTTONS in the Blue Room were all located in hidden, buried underground missile bunkers all over Maryland. The Captain said that at that very minute a farmer may be riding on his tractor, plowing his field located over top of one of those buried bunkers. If the missile in that bunker had to be fired, then the two feet or so of topsoil on top of the bunker would begin to quake and shake and slide off the bunker doors. The thick, heavy, steel, bomb blast proof doors spread would open upwards and flip the farmer and his tractor off to the side as the missile raised up and shot off into the wild blue yonder – at enemy aircraft that wasn't crafty enough to fool our radar systems and the dedicated soldier radar operators.

However, that’s not the most unforgettable aspect of the day. The most unforgettable information we junior high school kids were privy to that afternoon in Fort Meade was that the U.S. Army had missiles pointed at Fort Holabird in my great American hometown of Dundalk. And some where also pointed at the Bethlehem Steel Mills in Sparrows Point.

On that early 1960s day in Fort Meade's Blue Room, we junior high children from Dundalk were hit with the brutal realization that we not only lived “under the gun” of Commie-rat missiles – as we had always known. We lived with the possibility that American missiles would one day wipe us, our families, friends and neighbors off the face of the earth. I accepted then, and still do, as completely reasonable and sensible why our own missiles had been pointed at me and mine during the entire time that I was growing up in Dundalk and Sparrows Point.

Fort Holabird contained the top secret, U.S. Army Intelligence School. Bethlehem Steel was known for producing war armaments for America and our allies. If any of the United States' enemies were to set off one of the newest modern war terrors, the neutron bomb, over the Dundalk and Sparrows Point areas, it would kill all life below its detonation area, but not break a single twig on a tree. The enemy could potentially capture Ft. Holabird and Beth Steel intact.

In-depth intelligence files on America's friends, as well as our enemies, were maintained and stored at Fort Holabird; and the enemy would also have been able to produce fresh armaments at Beth Steel to do the rest of the conquering.

I preferred, and still do prefer, death over the losses of such supremely valuable assets to my enemies. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go. 


Copyright 2011 David Robert Crews {a.k.a. ursusdave}

Photo Sets by David Robert Crews {a.k.a. ursusdave}

ursusdave@yahoo.com