All this talk of Hat Police etc makes me wonder how we managed on Ascension Island in 82. The first deployment I was on was during the 'shooting' phase of the war, just aircrew, ops staff, maintenance personnel, medics and firemen. (and SIB
) We seemed to manage perfectly ok meeting the required op tempo. My last deployment there was after the ceasefire and the difference was astonishing, we had SROs, SSOs, flags going up and down at the requisite periods. In fact we had lots of 'support' and extra rules which really would have made the job a lot harder, if our op tempo was as before. It seems that all the b@#$%^&t arrives when the op tempo decreases, idle hands and the creation of empires etc.