Dallas

On November 22 1963, a warm, sunny Friday, president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. History might have been different, had he lived. But knowing what we know now, it might not necessarily have been better : Kennedy was not the cristal pure devoted statesman with perfect long term vision of a just society most of us thought he was.

I paid my due, and visited the spot of the murder many years later. Even to the present day it remains one of the touristic and emotional highlights for almost every visitor to Dallas.

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I was serving in the Belgian army at the time of the murder - counting off the very last days of my 12 month long military service. We were located in Arnsberg, Germany, not that far from the Iron Curtain. We were placed under full, red alert immediately, and everybody thought that the third world war had started because we were "sure" that the Soviets were responsible for that murder, and America was bound to retaliate.
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Fortunately, the alert was blown off quite soon, but I vividly recall the fear and panic we all felt at that time. A couple of years later, we lived through the Cuban missile crisis, where the "push on the button" came even that much closer...
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I was conceived and born during the second world war (of which I hold some memories, which I detailed before). And during most of my lifetime there have been almost continuous threats of new wars extending to, or erupting in, Europe. For the last twenty or so years the threat has receded to become almost imperceptible. With hindsight, it is almost a miracle that - up to now - we escaped the "final" nuclear Armageddon. Unfortunately, many other regions of the world have not been so fortunate and remain the theater of senseless slaughter.
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The picture shows Kennedy and his wife seconds before the murder.