I'm curious as to why a gas mask was necessary in 1982 even when off duty. Tell us more, unless it's forbidden by the Official Secrets Act.
I am supposing that this was aimed at me, so let me explain. The date was closer to 1972 - during the cold war and the IRA activity. The event was a thing Exercise Tactical Evaluation, or tac-E-val.
All three forces hold exercises on a regular basis to test some aspect of combat readiness. For an example there is a joint Army/Navy exercise held every three months called Exercise Tower Bridge. The main focus of that exercise is to slow march for ten miles while pulling a gun carriage. It used to be done once a year, but Her Majesty is getting older.
In the RAF, we would have small exercises every couple of months. Normal duties would continue, but there would be extra tasks on top of that. One favourite was the messing exercise. For 48 hours a field kitchen would be built and all food would be prepared, cooked, served and eaten out of doors. All in all the little exercises were good fun. Running around, shouting and letting off steam could rally break up the daily tedium.
Then every 24~ months we would have THE BIG ONE - taceval. It was the closest thing you could get to real war without killing people. It would start six months before hand with a tannoy message -
"Dah, dah, dah, DUM,,,,Dah, dah, dah, DUM. This is a Tactical Evaluation Exercise Information Broadcast. "Today a trade delegation of 120 business people left for Moscow to meet with their opposite numbers for the mutual benefit of both nations." End of broadcast."
These type of broadcasts would carry on with escalation of information - a disturbance, a protest (mainly peaceful), a protest (not so peaceful), a riot. A fire on board a Navy ship, the annual Soviet exercises too close to the border, a misunderstanding here, a high profile defection there. No computers, nor mobiles, so information was drip fed to us as it would have been on the 9:00 news, or the newspapers. After a couple of months of this we believed that we were heading for war.
That is the background to my earlier post. At the start of the exercise, it was "gas masks on - do not remove them till told to do so". On that occasion it was seven days later. You could cheat. Especially at night, in hopes of getting a good nights sleep. A favourite trick of the Exercise Team was to switch of all power to the barrack block at about 02:30, set off smoke grenades and after five minutes sound the fire alarm. Those of us who kept our masks on could get out (slowly). Those who didn't spent the rest of the day coughing and hacking with a burning throat. Then after the exercise there were extra duties for not following instructions.
During exercises there was no "off duty" time, just time when you were not required to be at work. So there you have it, we wore real gas masks for days at a time.
Regards
Chas