A Veterans Day Salute to the men and women of Titan II

The Titan II was a remarkable bird. The two-stage rocket, over a hundred feet tall and using storable hypergolic propellants (meaning automatic-igniting - don't try this for you hobby rocket)  was designed as a missile and served 20+ years as a bulwark of cold war deterrence. But it also had two other lives. It was tapped early on the split of a "man-rated" version that carried Gemini spacecraft to orbit. No operational Gemini launch ever failed.  At the end it its career, it was converted into a launcher for DoD satellites - and again, it never failed.

I knew it intimately as a missile crew member, so herewith my Veterans Day salute.

TITANS OF THE WATCH

by Matt Bille, formerly Captain, USAF, Titan II Missile Combat Crew Commander

They called them the Titans

Like the giants of old

And giants they were

Standing deadly and cold

They in their silver

And we in our blue

Alongside them we watched

And the enemies knew

We were there

We felt oft-ignored

Without glory we served

We relied on each other

And we stood by our word

In a life without rhythm

Lived by the clocks

Let it never be said

That we failed on the watch

So we passed the long hours

In silence we watched

No silhouettes painted

No gunbelts to notch

No medals or trophies

No break to the night

But the oath-keepers’ vigil

Let others have light

In the core of the Earth

In the armored command

Power undreamed of

In our keys and our hands

They called it a cold war

And cold it was kept

We knew that behind us

The citizens slept

They didn’t think of us

Or they wished us away

But we kept the watch

To give them the day

We still know each other

Hair silver and grey

The Titan’s proud comrades

We are to this day

We know what we did

We know what it was worth

And brothers we are

Until we return to the Earth

No more the sirens

Or the tick of the clocks

Let it read on my tombstone

“He kept the watch.”