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This Train Is Bound For...?

I was asleep when the word came. "The White Train left the Pantex plant in Texas last night. It's in Kansas right now and headed this way."

Carolyn looked very serious, but then she laughed at me when I jumped up from where I had been napping and grabbed hurriedly for my shoes. "Calm down. It will take at least a day or two to get all the way to Georgia."

"But I assured Jim Douglass at Ground Zero that I would have groups organized all along the southern route before the train came, and I was just getting ready to send out the first information packets this afternoon. Now it's too late for all that. I've got to get to the telephone fast and start calling people ahead of the train."

As we walked quickly across the yard to the Jubilee Partners office, I was struck by the incongruity of it all. Here we were on a beautiful October afternoon, still resting up from a marathon bus trip to Texas to pick up 36 refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. We had just returned with them to our welcome center in north Georgia where they would be given Christian hospitality and English lessons while waiting to be admitted to Canada a few weeks later. We were still celebrating the refugees' safe arrival.

I was just beginning to turn my attention to preparations for the coming of the nuclear weapons shipment, which we had expected later in the fall. Suddenly, ready or not, here it came.

My first action in the office was to call Jim Douglass back to confirm the details. I was impressed, as I would be repeatedly over the next few days, with his quiet and careful reporting of the facts: "The train left Pantex at about ten o'clock last night, October 11. It has been averaging 32.6 miles per hour so far. It left Fredonia, Kansas, a few minutes ago, at 12:35 p.m. their time." He continued to recite the details of mileages, average speeds, contact persons, telephone numbers, and so on while I wrote as fast as I could.

Then Jim began a description of the train itself: "Don, this is a big one, maybe one of the biggest shipments they've ever made. There are 21 special white cars on the train, not counting the locomotives or the caboose. That includes three turret cars full of heavily armed guards. We don't know exactly, of course, but there may be close to 200 nuclear warheads aboard the train."

Two hundred nuclear warheads. Like so many other people, I had been comparing these weapons shipments to the notorious German trains that transported millions of human beings to their deaths in concentration camps and gas chambers during World War II. Suddenly it struck me that this single train was transporting the potential for more death and human suffering than all those awful Nazi cattle cars put together. One thing was clear: we needed to alert as many people as possible along the most likely route of the train to protest what was being done against humanity in our name.

The next few hours were a confused blur of maps being tacked onto the walls, planning meetings, and a gradual crescendo of telephones ringing. The wall of one office was soon covered with maps, a bright red line tracing the expected route from the Pantex plant at Amarillo, Texas, to the naval weapons depot at Charleston, South Carolina. All of us were aware that the train was expected to pass right through our little town of Comer, just a few hundred yards from where we were setting up our tracking center.

As the hours passed with the telephones busy, the maps acquired a profusion of notes pinned all over them: "dep. Fredonia 12:35 p.m."; "ETA Memphis about noon Thur."; "call Koinonia when train reaches B'ham."; "confirm arrival with Channel 5."

The telephones continued to ring in the offices while the Jubilee community met downstairs in the dining room for prayer and reflection on what our personal responses should be. Several people were struggling with the question of whether to kneel on the tracks or, in some other nonviolent way, try to bring the train to an actual halt. Banners were made, and a track-side worship service was planned. The reality of the approaching train brought questions of faith and motivation into sharp focus. It was a time for serious thought and prayer.

We all agreed on several principles from the start. Our purpose was to express our concern not only for the intended victims of these weapons, but also for those who are deploying them. In so doing, we wanted to avoid the appearance of contempt or conceited defiance of authority. We also agreed that this train represents an evil that we must resist as firmly as possible but without violence in our own actions or thoughts. Finally, we felt we must be ready to bear the consequences of our witness.

We knew already that the U.S. government is trying to make it a felony even to pass along information about the route of the train. Later the Jubilee telephone bill arrived with a gap in the record for exactly those days when we had been calling people about the train. Our repeated inquiries to the telephone company brought the response that some of the records had been "temporarily misplaced" and that they could not give us more information, "not at this time."

The train continued on through Missouri and Arkansas, passing protesters and people holding vigils through the night. The day the train arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, it was just in time to be the focus of live television coverage during the noon news on all the networks. Throughout the afternoon, the train passed one demonstration after another in the Mississippi towns of Byhalia, Holly Springs, Hickory Flat, New Albany, and Tupelo.

Up ahead at Birmingham, Alabama, the biggest demonstration so far was shaping up complete with reporters, television crews, and floodlights. But the train never appeared there. Some 60 to 70 people expected it about 9 p.m., and they waited patiently until after 2:30 the next morning before conceding that it had somehow evaded them.

At Jubilee our frustration grew throughout the long night as we tried unsuccessfully to locate the train again. That frustration was mixed with the realization that our activities had been enough to evoke a response from the authorities who control the White Train. We had helped to focus the light of public awareness on the train, and they were seeking to escape back into darkness and secrecy.

By this time hundreds of people were waiting in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, for word of the train's approach, many actually waiting up all night in groups and helping in the search. As the hours passed, I grew more convinced that the train had detoured far to the south. At 4 a.m. I called Steve Clemens at Koinonia in southwest Georgia. He quickly agreed to check out the railroad stations in that area.

Meanwhile, the news media were becoming increasingly caught up in the spirit of the search, and several TV stations began to use their helicopters. Beginning early Friday morning, one or more of these helicopters were in the air searching large areas of Alabama and Georgia, passing their reports to us from time to time. One of the helicopter crews, checking out a clue that Steve had called in, spotted the White Train in south Georgia shortly past noon. We were back on the trail again.

Within minutes 16 people from the Jubilee community decided that if the White Train would not come to their demonstration, they would take their demonstration to the White Train. They piled their signs and banners into two vans and set out to try to intercept the train at Savannah, 200 miles away. The rest of us continued to call newspapers and radio and TV stations ahead of the train to ensure that it got maximum exposure for the remainder of the trip.

In Savannah Sr. Charlene Walsh and others from the Sisters of Mercy convent quickly organized a public vigil by the tracks, once again well covered by the local media. The Jubilee delegation arrived just minutes after the train sped through Savannah. After quick consultation, seven of them doggedly set out again in one of the vans to try to catch the train before it could reach its destination at the Charleston Naval Weapons Depot, just over 100 miles up the coast. Driving as fast as they dared through the dark South Carolina countryside, they finally overtook and raced ahead of the White Train. It was near midnight, and they were just a few miles outside of Charleston. Their own words describe the experience best:

Barbara Borgman: "We were riding parallel to the tracks on the lonely country highway, no moon, and a crossing only a few hundred yards ahead. We pulled onto the cross road, stopped the car, and piled out with our banner that John David and Paul raced to unfold, untangle, and stretch out at the side of the tracks as the light came nearer and nearer."

Paul Fitch: "As the train rumbled toward us with its horn blowing, I did not fully believe that it was the train, but I began to shake anyway. Then the two locomotives passed and the fortress of a white-painted turret car was beside us and I thought, 'Oh, my God,' as my heart just about stopped. As the cars passed I thought, 'Two hundred H-bombs. Two hundred H-bombs.'"

Judy DeMeester: "The physical presence of the train was very frightening to me. The night was dark, the seven of us were alone on that country road, and the train seemed enormous. I felt like a puny David facing a large, white, evil Goliath."

Avail Borgman (10-year-old girl): "I stood close to the van when the White Train came by and I stuck out my tongue. My heart was beating fast. I was afraid they would shoot at us, stop the train and come and arrest us, or call someone to get us."

Barbara: "Following the headlight, two diesel engines—somehow they seemed twice as large as any I'd ever seen—roared upon us, whistles blowing. Then out of the darkness behind them, gleaming white, came the first turret car, nine purring extra-long white boxcars, another turret, nine more boxes, a final turret, and a battered Seacoast Railroad caboose."

Caleb Borgman (13-year-old boy): "Holding the 'CHOOSE LIFE' banner with Paul was like a dream that came to life. They shined their light on us and it was weird thinking that so much power actually noticed us. After the train thundered by, I just stood there watching it until my dad said it was time to leave."

Paul: "Then, as soon as it was just us there in the night by the railroad crossing, we got back into the Volkswagen bus and continued down the highway. As we passed the train again, a spotlight shot out from the rear turret car and shone on the van as we drove beside the train."

John David Borgman: "My overall feelings about the train are that it is a white sepulcher—secretive, powerful, and well-guarded. Of course the government doesn't want it noticed. It's like seeing the gas chambers in Germany before they were used. The train proclaims death. Those bombs aren't going to stay on that train. They're not even going to stay in Charleston."

Don Mosley was a co-founder of Jubilee Partners in Comer, Georgia, where he was responsible for communications and peace work, when this article appeared.

This appears in the February 1984 issue of Sojourners