I WAS INTERESTED to read about Comiso airbase, Sicily, in your Bentley Continental GT Speed feature (Octane 226) because I was the first US Air Force member assigned to Comiso in 1983. President Carter had tried to get the Soviets to back off during the Cold War and, when they didn’t, he moved to establish six bases in Europe. I was sent there as the first Base Commander. I had never been to Europe or even outside the US during my 24 years in the Airforce, so I jumped at the chance straight away.
Comiso was still a bombed-out WW2 airfield when I arrived. There were two Navy officers there in charge of the construction office, and my role was to activate the base and oversee construction from the user’s side. We’d find an unexploded bomb almost every day during construction. The Navy Commander, George Holland, had quite a collection of stuff that had been discovered: old weapons, hand grenades and so on. On one occasion he
