UNSUNG! Songs of the Missileers

A Song Cycle

1. RIGHT NOW

2. IT’S A NO LONE-ZONE

3. [DEEDLE DEEDLE]

4. IN A HEARTBEAT

5. MISSILE MINDSET

6. DARK THOUGHTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

7. UNSUNG

8. STILL THERE [reprise]

Right now.

At this very moment, there are pairs of highly trained of U.S. Air Force Officers on hair trigger alert across a network of Minuteman III Launch Control Centers. Isolated deep underground, these young officers, many of them in their early twenties, have the responsibility, and the ability, to launch upwards of 450 ICBM’s within thirty minutes of receiving the nuclear codes. The Minuteman III nuclear missiles are buried, invisible, silent. Their minders, the Missileers, fly under the radar, denied the attention and the glory assumed by their airborne colleagues. Trained, and determined, to perform the unthinkable, the Missileer acts as the human component in the cold war strategy known as MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Post Cold-War, as the world confronts the reality of nuclear weapons, the futility of deterrence, and the danger of hair-trigger nuclear alerts, the Missileers continue to perform their duty as it was defined over a half century ago. Out of sight, the geography of nuclear war mirrors the darkest corners of our souls, we don’t want to go there. UNSUNG: Songs of the Missileers is based on interviews, oral histories and writing of former missileers.

4. IN A HEARTBEAT

Would you do it?

Absolutely, without a doubt.

No mental hesitation about that whatsoever

In a heartbeat.

We were tested.

We were trained.
Programmed to not even hesitate

Part of the ethos, to do what you have to do

You didn’t play games out there.

You do what you have to do.

Would you do it?

Yes. Without any hesitation.

Yes. In a heartbeat.

Would you do it?

Would have done it in a heartbeat, even today

I would have launched, I have no doubt

If they told us to launch we would launch,

If the message comes, I’m not going to think, I’m going to act

Come hell or high water

You had to be ready to do it.

We were

We are

100% committed.

You didn’t play games out there.

You do what you have to do.

Would you do it?

Absolutely, without a doubt.

In a heartbeat.

5. MISSILE MINDSET

I make a point of not remembering

That night I thought long and hard about what exactly my job was out there

We were trained,

Programmed to perform

We were the finger on the trigger

The human component

I make a point of not remembering

I put in the key once

That was different

The longest eight or nine minutes of my life

Nobody knew what was happening next

Is there more?

Is this it?

Is it done?

I make a point of not remembering

You sit here in the middle of the night

And you look at the little red box

And then

It’s absolutely real

And what you’re doing is crystal clear

And it ought to scare you

I make a point of not remembering

Nobody knows what is happening next

Is there more?

Is this it?

Is it done?

We are trained, drilled

Programmed to perform

We are human component

We are the finger on the trigger

I make a point of not remembering

UNSUNG: Songs of the Missileers, is based on interviews, oral histories and writing from former Missileers.

Photographs: HAER, Historic American Engineering Records Grand Force Air Force Base Painted Murals ND-13;

Command Console and “Who Ya Gonna Call” Mural, Peggy Weil