The author joined the RAF in 1953 as radar operator at a time when the echoes of WWII were dying away but the so called Cold War was looming ahead. The system and equipment that had seen WWII service was still in place and many of his superiors were of the same vintage with attitudes of that time. But things were changing and new equipments and systems were being developed to meet the threat of nuclear war. The author's first operational posting was to a small backwater radar unit in fenland Lincolnshire, RAF Langtoft. 'Mushrooms' is a story of the life of the junior ranks serving on that unit, and other units that formed the 1950s UK Air Defense System, the majority doing their National Service. The story is a light-hearted but accurate account of those times and the impositions and training towards a terrible kind of war that, fortunately, never happened