During nuclear conflict, bombers were stationed at Fairford Airfield, Gloucestershire, England, ready to launch against the Soviet Union. Their presence motivated many—internationally and locally—one sunless day to prepare for a flight they anticipated would never come.
Clouds clothed the sky in drab grey. Immediately beyond the airfield all was darkening summer-green forest, but the distant blue hills of Wales were hidden. Some engines were heard winding-up, preparing for a long journey, but none had taken off, and none were expected. The preparations fed a rising tension in the lull of the morning that should have been a day in itself. Breakfast rituals went on routine.
Then a stillness enveloped the place. Nothing came from the radio, as a priest’s meditation fills a church. It was the power of the vacuum that held the place. Not a living soul dared to change its colour.
After five years of war-service—but only four engagements—the news came that the bombers were coming home. The twenty-seven-year-old Commanding Officer, whose wife was expecting a baby in forty-eight hours’ time, received it by telephone: thousands of miles of telephone wires all instantly connected to him—through Oxford to No. 12 Group Headquarters in the Middle East General Staff Air Reconnaissance.
The news flashed through the base like a hurricane blast; it quickly reached all detachments and support services in England—the Bellman hangar dedicated to the Chinook; NATO and Central Alliance Shackletons doing the naval work—wherever scattered men waited for the return of responsibility or of loved ones. Reaction was electric. For some, the call was a happy confirmation of a news flash heard first from half-Official sources; for others, it brought wild excitement; for a few, pain grieving the bitterness of having seen the story at least three times before in other quarters of the world, too often converged to make it the colourful joke it had once been.
