CODENAME CHEROKEE

An excerpt from the bestselling memoir, THE ATOMIC TIMES

CODENAME CHEROKEE
(A 1500 word excerpt from THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground)

Cherokee was the second of 17 nuclear blasts in the 1956 United States H-bomb test series, Operation Redwing. Cherokee was typical of what happened in the South Pacific when over 1600 men (including me) became guinea pigs for the Department of Defense. The unstated motto at the Pentagon was: Everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.

And it did. The five Atomic F-Words were Fireball, Fallout, Fusion, Fission and F*cked Up. Cherokee was a prime example.

THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by its original hardcover publisher, Random House.

"THE ATOMIC TIMES is a gripping memoir of the first H-bomb tests by one of the small groups of young servicemen stationed at Ground Zero on Eniwetok Atoll. Leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment, this book is also a tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier." --Henry Kissinger