The sun doesn't set until after 10pm on July 4 at Holy Loch, and it's not noticeably dark until well after 11pm (due to daylight savings and proximity to the Arctic Circle). It gets light again at about 2:45am, and sunrise is before 3:40am. It's a terrible time and place for a fireworks display.
Well, he was drunk, it was closing, obviously the next step is to go pass out during the fireworks show.
The only people he could find were other drunks and people running the fish and chips shops...
There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a new US base commander arranging a July 4 fireworks display for 8:30pm, and being horrified to discover that the sun was still shining brightly in the sky...
Depends on when he got there, how horrified he'd be. Navy Morning Colors go down at 0800. In the Winter, when the sun doesn't come up by 0800, we delay it to 0900. When sunrise comes after 0900, we don't shift it again, we just have colors in the dark. And evening colors again at sunset, usually by the same duty section that just put them up.
If he got there in Winter, he noticed the time's were different right the fuck away.
If he spent any time there in the summer, he noticed the 'lights' were still on well after bedtime.
For the story, make it the base commander's boss, an admiral from Stateside celebrating July 4th by flying in to a base he'd never really spent time at.
But i really think we'd have to have been having horrible relations with our host nation to celebrate Independence from Britain by blowing shit up in Britain....