The edge of destruction

The world came closer to thermonuclear warfare during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 than ever before or since. Most Americans now aged between their late fifties and late sixties remember ‘duck and cover’ drills during the crisis which taught them to hide under school desks and adopt the brace position in case of nuclear attack. One man who at the time was a 13-year-old schoolboy in Buffalo, New York, told me how on the day after a drill, ‘I was sitting on the big yellow school bus thinking: Will I get home today? Am I going to die? Is this it? Just looking out the window at the world passing by and wondering…’.

Because there were no organised drills in British schools, recollections on this side of the Atlantic of those who were schoolchildren during the crisis are more various. Some, particularly at primary schools, were kept in ignorance by parents and teachers and now have no memory of the crisis. But I’ve been struck by the fact that even some very young British schoolchildren shared the fears of the 13-year-old in Buffalo. The mother of a former student of mine who was six at the time recalls hearing her father, a naval officer who was on leave during the crisis, discussing the threat of nuclear attack with her mother. Though the six-year-old’s parents spoke in a way their daughter was not supposed to understand, their peculiar conversation only succeeded in attracting the little girl’s horrified attention. She stood up in class next day and announced to the other children: ‘You are all going to die.’ The school was sympathetic but telephoned the little girl’s mother (who still remembers the telephone call) to take her home for the rest of the day.

The six-year-old English girl, like the 13-year-old boy in Buffalo, was right to be worried.