As a member of a MAMs team in the mid 70s my role was to be ready to deploy at short notice wherever required which included some highly attractive worldwide locations but for exercises generally meant somewhere in Northern European. Thus it transpired that during a station TacEval that my team together with another couple of teams was tasked to deploy to Macrihanish as part of the Herc force’s horizontal disperse to survive. However, real world demands meant that we would only simulate deployment and our actual deployment was to the MAMs crew room where some 15 of us sat swopping stories drinking tea and coffee whilst listening with bored disinterest to the frequent tannoy messages warning of air raids accompanied by the sound of thunderflashes as the umpires simulated yet another Warsaw Pact attack on Northern Wiltshire. All of a sudden the door burst open followed by a Flt Lt RAF Regt umpire who was obviously so appalled by our flagrant disregard of the exercise rules and failure to wear NBC suits, helmets or respirators that he was barely coherent with incandescent rage. He informed us that not only were we all dead, killed by the last attack but that he would report our unacceptable behaviour to the station authorities at the earliest opportunity. Once he had stopped his tirade, our explanation that, whilst we appeared to be at Lyneham , this was actually an apparition as we were in fact at Macrihanish (poised at instant readiness ready to move HM forces wherever needed to stem the flow of WP aggressors) and “would he like a cup of tea ?” failed to restore his equilibrium and served only to increase his anger. He was last seen storming towards ops to establish the veracity of our story. We meanwhile continued to drink tea and enjoy our simulated Macrihanish deployment until endex.