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.