Forty years ago this week, a heroic Russian submariner named Arkhipov almost certainly saved the world from nuclear disaster. He was a senior officer on the Soviet "Foxtrot" class submarine B59 off the coast of Cuba. At the height of the 1962 missile crisis his boat was detected and depth-charged by a US naval destroyer, USS Reale.
The B59 was armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Under attack, out of radio communication, and in the belief that war had begun, two of its executive officers wanted to retaliate; but they had no legal authority to fire without the specific assent of the third executive officer aboard, Arkhipov. They demanded he permit the return of fire; he refused, though he faced certain execution if his judgment were subsequently shown to be wrong. But had the B59 fired its nuclear weapons, the third world war would have begun.
One night rather earlier that autumn, a group of pupils were gathered on the bell tower of Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire, while Brother Primavesi erected the astronomical society telescope, intending to find Saturn.
Russian steppes
But before we looked heavenwards, Brother Primavesi pointed the telescope horizontally over the darkling wolds of north Leicestershire and told us to take our minds over the horizon, above the fens of Lincolnshire, across the North Sea, to Holland, the plains of low Germany, Poland and the vast Russian steppes beyond; and he announced, with that satisfaction which astronomers invariably exhibit when discussing the sheer banality of the world, that going east from out bell tower we would find nothing higher than us until we reached the Urals.
The Urals: the heart of the Soviet darkness. That night we gazed into the lightless night, and in our minds made that journey eastwards, before making that other journey into the sky, to the mysteries of Saturn and its rings.
When the crisis began to gather a couple of weeks later, we knew little about events in the western Atlantic, merely sensing the fears that were growing in the adult community which taught us. The daily prayers, suddenly and commandingly, included prayers for peace - for peace had ceased to be our condition and had become instead an objective. We began to understand the fate that was facing us.
Unutterable allegiance
For myself, the issue was clear enough. President John F. Kennedy was an Irish Catholic, and therefore I was his. It was simple. I owed him unutterable allegiance. On the other hand, there were the vile Communists who had seized Cuba, and who threatened world peace. It wasn't complex stuff, merely the way boys put a moral shape on the world.
But I lived in England, and my moral shape was not that shared by my cousins in Ireland. Visible from from the bell tower lay RAF Cottesmore, where nuclear V-bombers crouched, pointing towards the east and the Urals. More deadly still from our point of view, a US Thor missile base had recently been constructed nearby.
Both places were therefore targets. This meant one thing: when war came, it could come here first. And we were old enough to know that whether or not this would be the last war mankind would fight, we could not survive its opening salvoes.
So hourly, the certainty of all-engulfing catastrophe grew closer and closer. We tuned into AFN, American Forces Network, following the news with avid pessimism, and abandoning pop music altogether. Each night the school was called to prayer, beneath the vast monuments to the boys who had perished in the two earlier world wars.
Then came the evening of decision. The entire school sat crouched around its various radios, and by bedtime, war seemed inescapable. There was no jingoism, no stuff about filthy Communists, merely a ghastly certainty of what was to come.
At 3 a.m., we were awoken by the sirens of the fire alarm. "Christ, it's war," said a boy in my dormitory. The lights came on, and we exchanged grey looks as we obeyed the fire drill, putting on our dressing-gowns and slippers and padding to the assembly hall outside. In the dark, I remember looking east, towards RAF Cottesmore, towards the US Thor base, half expecting to see the impact of the Soviet missiles from beyond the Urals, and realising that of course I would never see them, for my schoolboy knowledge told me that my eyes would be melted instantly by the thermonuclear flash.
Saying the Rosary
Around me, believing that war had begun, hundreds of boys silently gathered in the assembly hall. One boy near me said the Rosary. I spoke no prayers that I now remember, for my mind was locked elsewhere, on my parents, and the certainty that I would never see them again.
In the school hall, apparently out of habit, prefects conducted stiff-upper-lip fire drill, name by name - Abbot? Here! Archer? Here! Ashe? Here! - while we all dutifully waited for death. I hoped to die outside rather than in the crowded assembly hall.
Then slowly, incredibly, the word spread that that alarm had been caused by a real but small fire in the school. The fire drill was genuine after all. We trooped back through the silent, warless night towards our dormitories. Braced for death, and now disappointed, I looked east through the dark, still wondering when the holocaust would come.
One of the reasons that it didn't was the ice-cold courage that same night of a Russian sailor called Arkhipov, under the ocean some 4,000 miles away. He helped make the world what it is today. Wherever you are, Arky: thank you.