If not for courageous actions of Vasily Arkipov, the Cuban Missile Crisis would have become known as the Cuban Missile War
History is normally portrayed from the viewpoint of the person in charge: the King, the President or the Commander-in-Chief. Their memoirs – and more importantly history – are recorded from their point of view – the strategic level. I can well imagine a Montgomery or an Eisenhower gently sipping their 20 year old red wine in a plush air-conditioned mobile home 150 miles from the front while the ordinary soldier was enduring temperatures of minus ten degrees somewhere in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium during December 1944 at the height of the Battle of the Bulge.