NATO and Me

The last time I was with NATO was in 1984. A student at Amsterdam, I was called up for a refresher/mobilization exercise to see if I could still handle the early 1960s gasoline truck I had learned to drive during my year of military service in 1982. When I got the call-up, that morning in 1984, I had to drop everything I was doing, get my gear (which I had brought home with me after completing my year of training), and head over to the meeting point near the city of Eindhoven, because we were pretending there was an international crisis and our unit had to prepare its vehicles and head East to meeting invading Warsaw Pact forces. It was like my year as a conscript: lots of waiting, lots of lame but adequate jokes, very mediocre food, and some driving around. The really good part was that lots of guys I had served with in 1982 got called up too, so it was a bit like a reunion. The bad part was that after arriving we basically had to go two nights without sleep before heading out into early morning rush hour traffic at 20 m/h. That was really dangerous, because there was no way you could keep your eyes open, even though you were fully aware of the situation. I remember slapping myself non-stop, sticking my head out the window, screaming at the top of my lungs, and still having my eyes close on me. At least one truck drove off the road, into a tree. I was really upset, because I was driving around with about 6,000 liters of gasoline on my back, surrounded by regular traffic going two or three times my speed. But other than that, it's a great memory. The memories of 1982 are almost all positive also, although at the time I would not have predicted this. Tomorrow, I'll be going back, but I doubt if it will be as eventful. As a guest of the Dutch Atlantic Commission I'll be part of a group of Dutch academics visiting NATO headquarters outside Brussels for a series of meetings with alliance officials about a variety of current NATO matters (for example the new strategic concept). It should still be pretty interesting, even though there are no former army buddies on the list of participants. If any of them reads this, maybe it's time for another reunion?