22 May 2015
Postcard from pre-The Falklands
July 2012
My initial reaction to the barbed wire around the perimeter of RAF Brize Norton is to think this military airfield must need more protection than a civil airport but, with ever tougher security everywhere, I quickly realise that it was not much different from Heathrow. That impression doesn’t last as we are photographed and have our IDs checked at the entrance to the airfield by an unsmiling official with a ‘Serco’ badge on his uniform. So he’s probably not allowed to threaten us with a gun, but there are plenty of soldiers outside who can do that, if needs be.
Raj, Robert’s friend of Indian extraction who is, according to Robert, “the most patriotically British of my friends”, has kindly driven Paul and me to catch our plane to Mount Pleasant on East Falkland via Ascension Island. Safely through security, we drove right up to the terminal, past some impressive military transport planes. We wonder whether one is ours.
The kindest description of the terminal might be to compare it – if you can remember that far back – with Heathrow Terminal 1 in the 1960s. Rows of cheap seats, a Spar for food and drink and that’s about it. There’s a television, so we watch Spain destroy Italy at football, which was fortunate as check-in was a minimum of three hours before the departure time of 23:59. We’d arrived at eight or, as the military prefers to say, twenty-hundred-hours for flight Romeo Romeo 8210. There’s no sign of Duty Free, a Business Club lounge or really any other distraction. The only other flight on the board leaves for Afghanistan at oh-four-hundred hours.
I need to stop the comparisons with Heathrow at this point, because the boarding and flight were quite different, despite the plane being a chartered Titan Air Boeing 767, rather than a Hercules or a VC10. Liquids of any quantity are allowed through security, provided there’s no alcohol. Computers are only checked if they’re MoD property. Baggage allowance is 54kg instead of 23kg. You don’t have to take your shoes or boots off and no-one is the slightest interested in your belt. There’s a long, but different, list of prohibited items in carry-on luggage, including ‘no live bullets’. Please. Banned too are copies of The Sun newspaper, FHM and other ‘revealing material’. Clearly soldiers need to concentrate on their mission.
A military officer is introduced as being in charge of the flight, even if all the Titan crew are civilians. “Our brave lads”, as Pamela’s grandmother used to call them, are everywhere. We take off on time.
The flight is dry – we drink over-sweet orange (ugh) or red fruit squash (which is worse) – the food is not going to win an award and rather alarmingly the rear of the aircraft is medevac, with two fixed stretchers and room for more. Nine hours later, we approach Ascension Island.
This volcanic Anglo-American military outpost has a population of little more than 800, and is almost devoid of vegetation, but boasts one of the longest runways of any airport in the world. The Space Shuttle used to land here and the airfield is a crucial refuelling stop in the mid-Atlantic. The crew tell us that the only thing to do on Ascension is to “sun-bathe”. Despite being a British island without even its own flag, everyone needs a visa to enter the island. We disembark to be placed in ‘the cage’, a small tarmacked area, with picnic tables, a NAAFI selling food and drink and (yes!) a Duty Free shop selling cigarettes (but no booze or Sun newspapers), all surrounded by chicken wire. A military official tells me we are allowed to take photographs, provided they are not of the “installations”. As the cage is surrounded by every type of dish, aerial, radar, navigation aid and mysterious looking huts you can possibly imagine, all of which I would think are defined as ‘installations’, I take one furtive shot (attached) mostly pointing at the plane, check around to see if I’ve attracted attention, before putting my camera a little self-consciously away. 60 minutes later, we re-embark, for our next 9 hour leg to the Falklands. I am conscious that the temperature difference will be stark, with 20C in England and 30C in Ascension. But now 0C awaits us.
The approach to Mount Pleasant is impressive, under a beautiful blue sky, passing above white tipped waves to greet a barren landscape with few signs of human presence, but great beauty. Once we land, we notice a Hercules and a VC10 next to us on the runway, but no other aircraft. The Typhoons must be hiding. Once we’ve signed pledges that we have neither pornography, nor a desire to work in the Falklands, we’re in.
My initial reaction to the barbed wire around the perimeter of RAF Brize Norton is to think this military airfield must need more protection than a civil airport but, with ever tougher security everywhere, I quickly realise that it was not much different from Heathrow. That impression doesn’t last as we are photographed and have our IDs checked at the entrance to the airfield by an unsmiling official with a ‘Serco’ badge on his uniform. So he’s probably not allowed to threaten us with a gun, but there are plenty of soldiers outside who can do that, if needs be.
Raj, Robert’s friend of Indian extraction who is, according to Robert, “the most patriotically British of my friends”, has kindly driven Paul and me to catch our plane to Mount Pleasant on East Falkland via Ascension Island. Safely through security, we drove right up to the terminal, past some impressive military transport planes. We wonder whether one is ours.
The kindest description of the terminal might be to compare it – if you can remember that far back – with Heathrow Terminal 1 in the 1960s. Rows of cheap seats, a Spar for food and drink and that’s about it. There’s a television, so we watch Spain destroy Italy at football, which was fortunate as check-in was a minimum of three hours before the departure time of 23:59. We’d arrived at eight or, as the military prefers to say, twenty-hundred-hours for flight Romeo Romeo 8210. There’s no sign of Duty Free, a Business Club lounge or really any other distraction. The only other flight on the board leaves for Afghanistan at oh-four-hundred hours.
I need to stop the comparisons with Heathrow at this point, because the boarding and flight were quite different, despite the plane being a chartered Titan Air Boeing 767, rather than a Hercules or a VC10. Liquids of any quantity are allowed through security, provided there’s no alcohol. Computers are only checked if they’re MoD property. Baggage allowance is 54kg instead of 23kg. You don’t have to take your shoes or boots off and no-one is the slightest interested in your belt. There’s a long, but different, list of prohibited items in carry-on luggage, including ‘no live bullets’. Please. Banned too are copies of The Sun newspaper, FHM and other ‘revealing material’. Clearly soldiers need to concentrate on their mission.
A military officer is introduced as being in charge of the flight, even if all the Titan crew are civilians. “Our brave lads”, as Pamela’s grandmother used to call them, are everywhere. We take off on time.
The flight is dry – we drink over-sweet orange (ugh) or red fruit squash (which is worse) – the food is not going to win an award and rather alarmingly the rear of the aircraft is medevac, with two fixed stretchers and room for more. Nine hours later, we approach Ascension Island.
This volcanic Anglo-American military outpost has a population of little more than 800, and is almost devoid of vegetation, but boasts one of the longest runways of any airport in the world. The Space Shuttle used to land here and the airfield is a crucial refuelling stop in the mid-Atlantic. The crew tell us that the only thing to do on Ascension is to “sun-bathe”. Despite being a British island without even its own flag, everyone needs a visa to enter the island. We disembark to be placed in ‘the cage’, a small tarmacked area, with picnic tables, a NAAFI selling food and drink and (yes!) a Duty Free shop selling cigarettes (but no booze or Sun newspapers), all surrounded by chicken wire. A military official tells me we are allowed to take photographs, provided they are not of the “installations”. As the cage is surrounded by every type of dish, aerial, radar, navigation aid and mysterious looking huts you can possibly imagine, all of which I would think are defined as ‘installations’, I take one furtive shot (attached) mostly pointing at the plane, check around to see if I’ve attracted attention, before putting my camera a little self-consciously away. 60 minutes later, we re-embark, for our next 9 hour leg to the Falklands. I am conscious that the temperature difference will be stark, with 20C in England and 30C in Ascension. But now 0C awaits us.
The approach to Mount Pleasant is impressive, under a beautiful blue sky, passing above white tipped waves to greet a barren landscape with few signs of human presence, but great beauty. Once we land, we notice a Hercules and a VC10 next to us on the runway, but no other aircraft. The Typhoons must be hiding. Once we’ve signed pledges that we have neither pornography, nor a desire to work in the Falklands, we’re in.
# posted by DavidF @ 16:12 
