To my left Captain Hamid of the Turkish army moved from the apron. He scowled at the odour in his open face mask, remembering the unspeakable ham-and-egg breakfasts in the mess. He steered his Harvard with a heavy hand, and forced the plane to left and right like a stupid horse on a parade ground. But I could eat the breakfasts and take the eventless winter wheatlands in my stride. Behind me a sharp-tempered Frenchman urged me on, flicking his flying gloves against the windshield. Harvards were taking off and making right-hand circuits of the airfield, solo trainees and student pilots with their instructors in the back seat, the junior air arm of NATO preparing itself for the even colder and more crowded high-altitude space above the north German plain. Within hours of my first solo I had decided to transfer to Bomber Command after my jet training. I saw myself at the controls, not of this antique World War II trainer, but of a nuclear, delta-winged Vulcan as it sped over the marshy forests of Byelorussia armed with pieces of the sun …

“Air Force two niner niner one…” A Canadian flight controller leaned against the tower windows, watching me through field glasses. Behind me a line of Harvards waited their turn to reach the runway, engines aimed at the back of my head.

“Moose Jaw tower, this is Air Force—” A crackle of squawks interrupted me. However clearly I spoke, trying to disguise my English voice and assume a Canadian accent, the RCAF flight controllers deliberately made their intercom messages as garbled as possible, venting all their irritation with the NATO training programme. The French, Norwegian, and Turkish pilots, despite the hours spent in the English-language classes, had virtually no idea what their instructors were saying to them. World War III could have broken out and ended before we disentangled ourselves and climbed through the babel of the Canadian skies.