-: At that time,
I think we'd got used to anytime
the squadron went away from home base,
it became very detached from home,
literally in communication terms.
Wherever we went in the world, there were telephone calls
by landline or letters, and that was the only communication
possible at that time in the '70s and '80s.
And that was what we'd expect
and that continued in the Gulf.
It was a greater distance but still
there was only telephone communication or letters.
And the telephone communication was cut off
at the beginning of the combat operations.
So there was no communication then,
only by letter,
and that was down to
how good the post was.
So it wasn't like today where there would be all sorts
of media communication, there was just none available,
which had the benefit actually probably from our side,
of being able to separate communication
from our normal role, from our work.
The people at home, the wives, the families, the children,
they had the unpleasant situation of watching the TV news
and getting a rather, all of their information was coming
through the TV and that was nothing focused on
the people they were interested in.
They couldn't relate the two, what they saw on TV
to what they knew the men were doing.