It is Sunday, 20 August 1962 and a reluctant group of young, Canadian radar technicians are disembarking from a train in Streator, Illinois. They are recruits for the air-search training school and will be instructed in the operation of long-range search radar equipment and in the art of survival in close proximity to the Inuit and the wildlife of the inhospitable, frozen, high Arctic tundra.Of the twenty-eight men living together, four of them become great friends as they make the most of a tough, alien lifestyle and find ingenious - often humorous - ways of spending their all-too-short leisure time.As the years go by, some will be able to cope, and some won't.