there are people who have lived in derry for twenty years and do n't know that there was once a `` special '' barracks for noncoms at the old derry army air corps base , a barracks that was a good half a mile from the rest of the base-and in the middle of february , with the temperature standing right around zero and a forty-mile-an-hour wind howling across those flat runways and whopping the wind-chill factor down to something you could hardly believe , that extra half a mile became something that could give you frost-freeze or frostbite , or maybe even kill you .