"On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague"..
As Max Boyce used to say "I was there!"
I relate this in the full knowledge that memory is less than perfect, but I insist that the essentials are correct.
At Gutersloh we had 19 sqdn Lightnings on QRA/ Battle Flight [I don't think 92 had arrived from Wildenrath or Geilers at that time], plus 2 and 4 sqdns with Hunters, and a chopper unit. On the night of 19/20 August I was the night duty forecaster, with one assistant, in the ground floor Met Office under the tower and beside Ops. There was no flying, no weather, and I assume that the few duty personnel around were in their sacks or at least thinking about it. This probably included my observer, because we could snatch 40 winks in turn between about 2300 and 0100.
In burst an American.
"The bastards have invaded Czecho!"
In burst another American "why aren't you guys flying!"
Calm down dear, and tell me about it.
"The Pact has invaded .......... our SOPs are to land at the nearest NATO base, get cracking!"
There was indeed a large US chopper parked outside the window.
Now Gutersloh is really rather near to Czecho, so that was quite exciting.
So I did something I had never done before [or since], and rang the Staish, put the US Captain on the phone to him, woke the observer, ran off umpteen copies of the forecast for the Pact countries and awaited the hooter. Within minutes we were a tad busy, as the sh1t hit the fan.
When I got home my wife mentioned something about "yet another Taceval". Little did she know she was nearly put on a coach to Calais.