MUCH-Binding-in-the-Marsh was a radio show about an RAF station in the 1940s and 1950s.
My piece about it made old chum Mike Shaw chuckle. The former editor of the Colne Valley Guardian was once stationed at Moreton-in-Marsh which was the real life inspiration for the location of the comedy show.
He was called up for two weeks as a reservist after completing his National Service and sent to the RAF station at Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire in deepest December – for nuclear training.
This was the postwar period when the Cold War was at its height and the nation laid plans of how to react in case of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
Every town had a nuclear nerve centre, for instance. Huddersfield’s was near Chapel Hill lights and above ground. It was hardly a bomb proof bunker. One big sneeze from Moscow would have knocked it down.
But the fear was real back then. President Kennedy took the world to the brink of war with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and this possibility of conflict was reflected in such films as the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr Strangelove.
Peter Sellers plays a former Nazi nuclear scientist now advising the US President and Slim Pickens rodeo rides an atom bomb in a doomsday attack.
Oh we had a lot of laughs back in the 50s and 60s, watching out for mushroom dawns.
So what did Mike’s training consist of in this era of possible extinction?
He says: “We learned the rudiments of fire fighting in the event of a nuclear attack. We got up early on cold winter mornings and coupled together miles of flexible water pipes. After dinner we uncoupled them. It was pretty grim work in freezing weather and gloves could not be worn.”
The logic behind the exercise was that if the bomb did drop, the nation would need to transfer water huge distances. Thankfully, the bomb didn’t drop. But if it ever does, Mike is already nuclear trained.
