We were staying in Barry, at my fatherin-law’s house, an old Victorian pile with views high over the town and out across the Severn Estuary.
I’d been vaguely aware all day that the men were getting quite excited by the moon shot, speculating on when they’d land and staying up till gone midnight in the hope they might witness the actual moment of impact. I’d been rather out of all this – tucked up with my first baby, born a month to the day before – and asleep by 9 p.m. with all the bed-time routines completed.
When he woke at about 3.30a.m. I stumbled around the unfamiliar furniture. The bedroom was hot and stuffy but downstairs the living room opened on to a veranda.
Through the dark house we went, my restless, whining little bundle, the blankets and nappy bag and me. Pulling back the curtains and opening the French doors, the spectacle of the lights of streets and docks, right out to the island, lay below a fine, clear July sky illuminated by a glorious moon.
I had started feeding him before I remembered – gazing out – that human beings just might already be walking around up there. Very slowly, gently, carefully, I managed to tune the old black and white TV to BBC1, the image shifted in and out of focus and the American voice came across clearly, just starting the count-down.
By the time they actually landed and the hatch was beginning to open, Daniel had drunk enough to be gazing at me in wide-eyed satisfaction. I turned his face to the screen as the astronauts emerged from the spacecraft, saying to him, ‘You won’t remember this, lovely boy, but you ARE seeing it. The first time men have ever stood on the moon. And I’ll remind you when you’re older.’ Despite Vietnam, despite my condemnations of the US for so much of the damage they were inflicting around the world, despite the continuing fear of the tension between America and Russia – and, most of all, despite well-founded suspicions that this would be yet another scientific breakthrough of immense value to the arms industries – it was, nevertheless, magic in a way I found totally unexpected. There was just the hope – looking at the men on screen indoors and the setting where they were standing in that beautiful sky outside – the hope that this might make things different. That humanity would begin to recognise how beautiful and fragile our planet is, how much we need to cherish and care for it, and gain at least a sense of ‘all being in it’ together. For a few brief weeks, the moon-landing seemed a fine epitaph to the best of the spirit of the 60s – the decade when, for a time, we believed that things really could change. And I wanted my son to know he was part of all that, too.
More Moon Memories From Dave Bracy:
Where was I on July 20th 1969? Well, it may come as no surprise to those who know me that I was holding a drink at the time. It was a party held at the Officers’ Club on Lowry AFB in Denver Colorado. And we were dragged out, drinks in hand, to view the module descent on a very fuzzy TV. I was in the USA, under secondment to a British Government Organisation involved in monitoring S.A.L.T. because of the connections I had made in 1966 when I visited the laser labs of University of Colorado, Boulder. But for some of us the landing was not the heart stopping event. This came later, when Eagle took off. They had had to jettison some load because there was concern that too much fuel had been used to find a good landing place. We were not sure if they were going to make it. In fact Command Module Columbia, piloted by Mike Collins, had to drop down in orbit to ensure safe docking with Eagle. Later on, a cadet at Cape Canaveral, not recognising Commander Collins, asked him ‘what he did’. He replied: ‘Oh I’m just a driver – but it is a rather expensive bus!’
From Michael Smart:
I was working at this time on employment and labour relations in Smithfield Meat Market (a very sensitive subject) for the Prices and Incomes Board. The day after the landing, the Chairman said ruefully, ‘We can put a man on the moon, but we are not able to put a fork-lift truck in Smithfield.’ Such was the opposition of the traditional market workers – a naturally tough lot – to changing their working practices, though I believe this was remedied some years later.
From Hugh Hubbard:
In Balsall Heath, Birmingham doing vacation social work plastering a house of a poor immigrant family and helping on a children’s playground. We crowded round a TV to watch the landing. As a child I used to look at the stars, planets and moon with a small telescope mapping them with the help of Patrick Moore’s books. When the Americans landed on the moon I no longer looked at it – not wanting to look on a piece of American real estate!