Following the instructions barked by a soldier straddling the warhead section of a Pershing II intermediate-range missile, a squad of G.I.s from the U.S. 56th Field Artillery Command began to "demate" the weapon, manually separating its five stages. Olive-green shipping canisters lay open, ready for shipment of the components from West Germany's Mutlangen Army Base to the U.S. An empty missile launcher was marked with white tape to indicate the spots where cutting tools would slice it into scrap metal.
Far to the east, Soviet army engineers near the Central Asian town of Sary- Ozek stripped SS-23 and SS-12 missiles of...
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