The Invisible Man Who Saved the World...

As one who was originally a member of the USARAADCOM Team and part of NORAD, I came across a story that needs to be told, especially now when our leaders feel that there is only heroism in aggression.
This is a story that happened during the midst of the Cold War and few if anybody know about.

It deals with an obscure Colonel in an obscure duty station in a far-off place.

Were it not for this obscure soldier,
there is a very good chance that the entire world would have
been reduced to a nuclear wasteland.

This is a story that has been kept a secret for way too long.

Here's the background.

Back in the mid eighties, a blip showed up on Russian computers that indicated an intercontinental missile attack on the Soviet Union by the USA.

This caused the generals to revert to their code books which upgraded the offensive posture of all missiles in their silos.

But God must have been listening.

The duty officer at this precise time was an obscure Russian colonel who spent the next hour talking Russian generals to stand down arguing against the circumstantial evidence that the blips appearing on the computer screen seemed to be confirming: that the USSR was under attack.

We wonder how many American generals would have taken on that responsibility?

. In effect, by standing down, and not changing his position, that Russian colonel had become America's biggest hero. It is no exaggeration to say that he literally saved millions and perhaps even the fate of the planet.
As it turned out, it was a harmless blip caused by migrating birds and instead of being the cause of massively assured destruction on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it was nothing!...

Our Colonel was the reluctant hero.

Yet, he was cashiered out for not carrying through his orders and now lives in retirement on a barely supportable pension in an obscure officer in an obscure city forgotten by most of history.

I don't remember his name and I only saw a reference to it once in a Reader's Digest article that must have slipped through the censors; nor do I remember the village he was retired to. But just the same he was for me and still is perhaps the biggest hero this world has known and, today, he is totally invisible.

There are no statues to him. No books singing his praises. NO way to know he even existed!...

An invisible presence who saved the world.

Something to think about when we get a little too carried away with our own power.

Les Aaron
the Armchair Curmudgeon

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