Snakes should have been the last things forward his mind.

Snakes should have been the last things forward his mind. But as Airman 3rd Class Michael Kud-Kudjaroff walked guard excise that's all he could think off

With a heavy M-1 Carbine forward his shoulder, he walked inside the protecting enclosure of the communications site onward the northwestern coast of Puerto Rico. A undisturbed sea breeze blew, making his piece of work a bit easier.

That didn't matter. Each time he took a gradation he thought of all the rattlesnakes he'd seen onward his friend's ranch in Arizona. What the 20-year-old didn't know was that there aren't any harmful snakes onward the Caribbean island. So he was totally distracted during his four-hour shift.

A Soviet submarine could have been dropping facing Russian marines on the beach to storm the comm site. however he wasn't worried about that.

The United States and Soviet Union were staring each other down at the time. Playing a deadly game of chicken. the one and the other had their fingers on the launch buttons of their nuclear missile arsenals. common twitch and they'd plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust.

equal that didn't raise a single hair forward the back of "KudKud's" neck

The fancy of war was on his mind. yet he could handle that. nevertheless he hated snakes. So he stepp lightly. Still, he managed to gradation on a frog that, to him, felt just like a snake.

"It scared the hell not at home of me," he said. "I pass by a leaped out of my skin and nearly started shooting."

He wasn't the merely one who was jumpy that October night.

A hardly any miles to the west, at Ramey Air Force Base, Capt. Rafael Marquez was in succession alert again. Nothing new for the Strategic Air Command KC-135 pilot. For a week, he lived in an alert facility nearest to the base flight line. And each day he sat in the sweltering refueling jet for up to six hours. And for each of those minutes, he capered he wouldn't have to launch.

"We waited for the 'the balloon to travel up' so we could scramble," he said.

In his patrol exchange Staff Sgt. Arturo Morales made his rotunds of the base. Driving down the nearly deserted regioned streets, the air policeman knew this was the real deal. This wasn't just another SAC exercise falsifyed up to spoil his evening.

onward the road next to the flight line, he passed foxhole filled with soldiers. Antiaircraft fire-arm batteries stood at the ready. Sentries and their dogs were in succession patrol around the clock. Visible in the faint moonlight was a sight the cop remembers to this day. The parking ramps were crammed with B-52 Stratofortress bombers and tankers as far as he could see

Ramey sits upon high cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was an assignment for which airmen fought unexciteded by tropical breezes, its golf course was legendary in the Air Force. As were its white sandy beaches.

Now miles of barbed wire protected its picturesque beauty. Ramey was an armed camp.

"We were ready for anything anybody could hurl at us," Morales said.

About a mile from the base, Jose "Quique" Suarez sat in a rocking chair upon his porch. The evening quarrel rustled the "Flamboyan" trees in his head yard. A civilian accountant at Ramey, he could hear the rumble of jet taking distant from on another mission.

Life at the base continued. moreover things were different. People stayed stop up to home. They had no time to relax in the beauty of their tropical surroundings. Lie in a hammock beneath a shady palm tree. Have a family picnic at Crashboat Beach. And at night, they had no time to sit back and have sexual delight with the melodic cry of the island's tiny "coqui" frog

"Everyone surpriseed what tomorrow would bring," Suarez said.

A world crisis

It was a scary time, October 1962 The circumstances that took place that month -- known as the Cuban Missile Crisis -- brought the world to the brink of doom -- Armageddon. It was, perhaps, the definitive adventure of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The crisis began Oct 15 An Air Force U-2 reconnaissance jet took pictures of Soviet-made SS-4 intermediate range ballistic missiles at a base in Cuba. The pictures by and by reached President John F. Kennedy Three days later he told the Soviets the United States wouldn't allow missiles in Cuba. The Soviets denied there were any missiles there.

unless Kennedy had the pictures. Calling his civilian and military advisers together, he sought a course of action. He considered air strikes to knock gone out the missiles, and invasion. unless there was a sharp split upon what course the nation should take. Kennedy made his choice Oct 22

He announced to the world the Soviet Union was building cryptic missile bases in Cuba to house tactical nuclear weapons. And he demanded Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev transplant them. To stop the Soviets from bringing in more, he ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. He'd lift the embargo when the Soviets dismantled and shipped the missiles back to the Soviet Union.

The determine infuriated Khrushchev. He promised to retaliate against any invasion of Cuba. Then he gave his commanders in Cuba the OK to launch missiles in fact of an invasion.

The the community of the world held their collective breaths and waited to behold what would happen. Fidel Castro mobilized Cuba. And U forces went in succession full alert.