HISTORY: Spies the limit.

The huge antennae and web of wires and cables that swung in the breeze high over the Kirknewton barracks may have provided a clue as to what was going on behind its carefully-guarded fences.

It was the 1950s, tension was running high between the world's superpowers and military bases everywhere remained on constant alert.

The world tottered on the edge of a nuclear precipice, the push of a button away from wipe-out. It was 1952 and the United States had just detonated the world's first hydrogen bomb, Eisenhower was in power and Joseph Stalin was on his deathbed.

The chill of the Cold War was in the air, yet exactly what some 500 American military men were getting up to in the small rural patch on the outskirts of Edinburgh was still, for most locals at least, a mystery.

And for those inquisitive enough to dare to ask, the curt reply was that it was anything from making ping-pong balls to training helicopter pilots and boring paperwork. Why, many may have wondered, all the secrecy?

Few knew that during the crucial years of the Cold War, Kirknewton was at its hub. While the focus may have been on Washington and Cuba, Moscow and Japan, it was the military base on its periphery which helped provide the CIA and US military with its eyes and ears.

Indeed, should the unthinkable ever have come to pass, this small and peaceful West Lothian village would almost certainly have been required to provide the crucial communication link between Washington and its Moscow counterpart.

Today, the military spotlight has suddenly returned to the sleepy village with the news that a Ministry of Defence army shake-up will see at least 2000 - perhaps 4000 - squaddies based there in a new "super barracks" facility.

At the same time, it emerged that the army will quit its bases at Dreghorn and Redford, plunging surrounding areas into uncertainty and confusion.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox's announcement - which included confirmation that Glencorse barracks in Penicuik will expand and the army HQ in Scotland at Craigiehall will be lost - took locals in all affected areas by surprise.

It certainly left the small Kirknewton community reeling as it struggled to absorb an unexpected return to the days when military trucks bumped over its narrow country roads and officers in uniform popped into the local shops.

Few there are old enough to recall when the area first shed its quiet rural status to become a military hub. In 1941, the RAF opted to occupy a site at Whitemoss, first as a home to 289 Squadron, an anti-aircraft unit, and later as an RAF flying school where pilots had to negotiate both its grassy landing strip and wild cross winds from the nearby quarry.

From that grew a military camp with 39 huts built to accommodate servicemen and, later, German prisoners of war. Known as Camp 123 Dalmahoy, it's believed its inmates were mostly high-ranking Nazi officers en route to the US.

At one point the base was used to store bombs and some locals say there may have been nuclear weapons kept there, too. But by far its most fascinating period began in 1952, when the Americans came marching in.

"Yes, I can tell you now that I was a spy," laughs former US airman Joe Mullican. He's now 75 and living in Mississippi, but back in 1956, when he first arrived in Kirknewton, he was a fresh-faced 20-year-old straight from university.

"My specialism was as a Russian linguist. I did a little eaves-dropping, you know the kind of thing. It's more than 50 years ago but even now there's not a lot I'm allowed to say about it."

He ended up at the site of one of the world's earliest Cold War projects, a joint CIA-US Air Force ground station set up at Kirknewton to intercept in particular Soviet Union communication and radar traffic.

There, in an operation similar to today's British listening base GCHQ, in Cheltenham, staff like Joe tuned into Morse code messages and voice signals, military and commercial radio traffic and, as the technology advanced, faxes and pictures across the wires.

Dubbed "Silent Warriors", they sifted through garbled radio waves and radar signals, their priority always to seek out and decipher communications from the Soviet "reds".

And should Washington feel the need to make contact with Moscow - an event that would only occur in the gravest circumstance - the call would be routed via Kirknewton.

It was, recalls Joe, a non-stop operation. "There was something like 100 of us working at any one time, round the clock. In total there must have been at least 300 of us and then you had all the support personnel.

"The antennae were spread across acres of ground - there were huge poles strung with wires. People wondered what we were doing but we couldn't say."

Those who asked certainly never got a straight answer. Even the local girls swept off their feet by the dashing Americans were kept in the dark.

"I would say 80 per cent of the single guys posted there left as married men, which I think was a bit of a sore point with the local lads," recalls Joe, whose Edinburgh-born wife, Bella, died last November after 52 years of marriage.

"I remember her asking what the antennae were for and me making up a story that we used them as obstacles for helicopter flight training. We couldn't talk about anything we did at all."

Many were fed ludicrous replies over the work which added to the charm and mystique of the American visitors.

Nora Jackson lived in the High Street at the time and married a GI based at Kirknewton. Now living in Washington DC, she recalls being kept clueless about the base.

"We weren't sure what the guys did," she admits. "They used to tell us that they made ping-pong balls," she laughs.

What was clear was that the Americans made a strong impression. Clearly Kirknewton left its mark on them, too, as today there are organisations in the US which regularly organise reunion events for air force personnel once based there.

Among them, Al Lorentzen, now of Inverness, Illinois, recalls four years at Kirknewton as an intercept radio operator and 44 years married to the girl he met while posted there.

"I thought I had landed in heaven," he says. "I understand RAF Kirknewton had the highest marriage rate in the USAF. Those gals were irresistible.

"The secretive nature of our work at Kirknewton did pose problems for us young lads," he adds. "We mostly told folks we were clerk typists.

"My wife, June, never knew what I was up to until many years later."

MOVE 'LUDICROUS'

PLANS to sell off the Army's historic bases in Edinburgh and build a new super-barracks in West Lothian have been branded "ludicrous" by retired senior officer Clive Fairweather, who used to run large parts of the Army in Scotland.

He said: "There was military accommodation at Kirknewton until the late 1980s but it was desperately unpopular. The main problem was it was miles away from anywhere and it was difficult for them to come back at night. There was a level crossing but not the infrastructure or jobs or facilities for families.

"It is also now millionaires' row and I'm not sure they will welcome hundreds of squaddies on their doorsteps."

In addition, he said, both the Dreghorn and Redford barracks were within "easy marching distance" of training areas. "The Dreghorn barracks is literally 300 yards away from the training area. It will take five times as long to get there from Kirknewton, adding to the carbon footprint greatly, as troops will have to be driven."

Edinburgh Evening News July 22, 2011