MY FAVOURITE SHORT STORIES Revisited
The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth
(My Favorite Ghost Story)
Reviewed by Vikram Karve
Frederick
Forsyth, the famous bestselling author, is best
known for thrillers such as The Day of
the Jackal and The Odessa File.
However – my favorite piece of fiction
written by Frederick Forsyth is a short story called THE SHEPHERD
“The Shepherd” is a longish short story –
almost a novella – but the narrative is so gripping that it keeps you engrossed
from start to finish.
Indeed – “The Shepherd” is one of the
greatest aviation tales ever written.
Born in Ashford, Kent, UK – Frederick Forsyth
joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) – and at the age of 19 – he was one of the
youngest pilots in the RAF.
Frederick Forsyth served in the RAF till 1958.
Then he became a journalist – and later – a
famous writer who authored many novels.
Forsyth wrote this story as a Christmas gift
to his wife after she requested him that a “Ghost Story” be written for her.
Written on Christmas Day 1974 – the story was
published in 1975.
Normally – a “Ghost Story” is set in eerie
haunted homes or uncanny macabre settings.
But – Forsyth set his “Ghost Story” in the
skies – in airspace – drawing upon his experience as an Air Force Pilot.
“The Shepherd” tells the story of a young RAF
Fighter Pilot – flying solo (alone) in a De Havilland Vampire Jet Fighter
Aircraft – from an airbase in Germany (Europe) – to England – on Christmas Eve
1957 – to spend his Christmas Leave at home.
It is 66 minutes flying time to his
destination – Lakenheath – and the Vampire has enough fuel for over 80 minutes
in the air.
From Lakenheath – the pilot intends taking a
lift down to London in the “Liberty Bus” which leaves just after midnight.
From London – he is confident of hitching a
lift to his parents’ home in Kent – and – by Breakfast Time – he would be celebrating
Christmas with his family.
(Dear Reader:
If you have served in the Military – you may have experienced similar
situations – where you are rushing home on leave – to reach just in time to
celebrate a festival or an occasion like Birthday, Anniversary etc)
Flying home for his Christmas Leave – the RAF
Fighter Pilot – solitary in the cockpit of the airborne Vampire Jet – is in a pleasant
mood – thinking happy thoughts of Christmas.
The first 21 minutes of his flight are
uneventful – as he crosses the landmass of Europe – and he is soon flying over
the North Sea.
10 minutes out over the North Sea – trouble
starts – but the problem starts so quietly – that it is several minutes before the
pilot realizes that he is deep trouble.
At first the pilot discovers that his
aircraft’s compass is not working.
Then – he realizes that his radio set is dead.
And – as he observes the instrument panel –
he realizes – to his horror – that his jet aircraft has suffered a complete
electrical failure.
The young pilot implements all the emergency procedures
he has learnt during his training – and he tries to recall the words of his
instructors.
He considers “bailing out” – but rules out
that option – since he knows his aircraft isn’t designed for safe ejection – and
– even if he succeeds in safely bailing out of the fighter jet – he would
freeze to death in the ice-cold sea lashed by sub-zero winds.
Lost in the fog – and – low on fuel – the young
pilot decides to use a last resort technique – a procedure to be used in
extreme emergency – flying triangles – in the hope that the odd behavior would
be noticed by radar scanners of the early warning system on the coast – and they
would send up a rescue plane to “shepherd” him to a safe landing.
However – nothing happens – and the young
pilot has lost all hope – when suddenly – he sees the ghostly silhouette of a
de Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber rise from the fog bank below him.
The young pilot realizes that the triangular
pattern has worked.
The pilot in an old World War II vintage de
Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber aircraft with the initials “JK” on the side
is signaling that he understands the problem and will guide and “shepherd” the
Vampire to safety.
(“Shepherding”
requires the rescue aircraft flying wing-tip to wing-tip with the disabled
plane – and – the rescue aircraft/pilot is called the “shepherd”)
The Mosquito “shepherds” the Vampire slowly
into the descent.
By now – the Vampire has almost run out of
fuel.
Suddenly – the Mosquito Pilot (“shepherd”) –
he points a single forefinger at the young pilot – and then forward through the
windscreen – meaning – “Fly On and Land”.
At first – the young Vampire pilot sees
nothing.
Then – the blur of two parallel lines of
lights become visible in the fog – indicating the runway – and – the young
pilot is able to safely land his Vampire.
After being rescued – the young pilot tries
to find out the name of the “shepherd” – the Mosquito Pilot who guided him to
safety.
But – no one knows anything – and he is told
the Mosquito Aircraft are no longer in service.
The bewildered young pilot wonders: “Who is
the mysterious pilot (shepherd) who “shepherded” me to safety…?”
The young rescued pilot’s search for the “shepherd”
becomes more and more mystifying – till suddenly – the young pilot notices an
old World War II picture in a room and recognizes the pilot in it standing by
his Mosquito with the same JK initials.
And then – the story heads towards its
surprise ending.
“The Shepherd” is freely available at various
websites on the internet for you to read.
Dear Reader – for your convenience – I am
posting the story below from the URLs mentioned:
THE
SHEPHERD
For a brief moment, while waiting for the
control tower to clear me for take-off, I glanced out through the perspex
cockpit canopy at the surrounding German countryside. It lay white and crisp
beneath the crackling December moon.
Behind me lay the boundary fence of the Royal
Air Force base, and beyond the fence, as I had seen while swinging my little
fighter into line with the take-off runway, the sheet of snow covering the flat
farmland stretched away to the line of the pine trees, two miles distant in the
night yet so clear I could almost see the shapes of the trees themselves.
Ahead of me as I waited for the voice of the
controller to come through the headphones was the runway itself, a slick black
ribbon of tarmac, flanked by twin rows of bright-burning lights, illuminating
the solid path cut earlier by the snow-plows. Behind the lights were the humped
banks of the morning's snow, frozen hard once again where the snow-plow blades
had pushed them. Far away to my right the airfield tower stood up like a single
glowing candle amid the hangars where the muffled aircraft men were even now
closing down the station for the night.
Inside the control tower, I knew, all was
warmth and merriment, the staff waiting only for my departure to close down
also, jump into the waiting cars and head back to the parties in the mess.
Within minutes of my going, the lights would die out, leaving only the huddled
hangars, seeming hunched against the bitter night, the shrouded fighter planes,
the sleeping fuel bowser trucks, and above them all the single flickering
station light, brilliant red above the black and white airfield, beating Out in
Morse code the name of the station CELLE to an unheeding sky. For tonight there
would be no wandering aviators to look down and check their bearings; tonight
was Christmas Eve, in the year of grace 1957, and I was a young pilot trying to
get home to Blighty for his Christmas leave.
I was in a hurry and my watch said
ten-fifteen by the dim blue glow of the control panel where the rows of dials
quivered and danced. It was warm and snug inside the cockpit, the heating turned
up full to prevent the perspex icing up. It was like a cocoon, small and warm
and safe, shielding me from the bitter cold outside, from the freezing night
that can kill a man inside a minute if he is exposed to it at 600 miles an
hour.
"Charlie Delta..."
The controller's voice woke me from my
reverie, sounding in my headphones as if he was with me in the tiny cockpit,
shouting in my ear. He's had a jar or two already, I thought. Strictly against
orders, but what the hell? It's Christmas.
"Charlie Delta... Control," I
responded.
"Charlie Delta, clear take-off," he
said.
I saw no point in responding. I simply eased
the throttle forward slowly with the left hand, holding the Vampire steady down
the central line with the right hand. Behind me the low whine of the Goblin
engine rose and rose, passing through a cry and into a scream. The snub-nosed
fighter rolled, the lights each side of the runway passed in ever quicker
succession, till they were flashing in a continuous blur. She became light, the
nose rose fractionally, freeing the nose-wheel from contact with the runway,
and the rumble vanished instantly. Seconds later the main wheels came away and
their soft drumming also stopped. I held her low above the deck, letting the
speed build up till a glance at the airspeed indicator told me we were through
120 knots and heading for 140. As the end of the runway whizzed beneath my feet
I pulled the Vampire into a gently climbing turn to the left, easing up the
undercarriage lever as I did so.
From beneath and behind me I heard the dull
clunk of the main wheels entering their bays, the lunge forward of the jet as
the drag of the undercarriage vanished. In front of me the three red lights
representing three wheels extinguished themselves. I held her into the climbing
turn, pressing the radio button with the left thumb.
"Charlie Delta, clear airfield, wheels
up and locked," I said into my oxygen mask.
"Charlie Delta, roger, over to Channel
D," said the controller, and then, before I could change radio channels
added, "Happy Christmas."
Strictly against the rules of radio
procedure, of course. I was very young then, and very conscientious. But I
replied, "Thank you, Tower, and same to you." Then I switched
channels to tune in to the R.A.F's North-Germany Air Control frequency.
Down on my right thigh was strapped the map
with my course charted on it in blue ink, but I did not need it. I knew the
details by heart, worked out earlier with the Navigation Officer in the Nav
hut. Turn overhead Celle airfield on to course 265 degrees, continue climbing
to 27,000 feet. On reaching height, maintain course and keep speed to 485
knots. Check in with Channel D to let them know you're in their airspace, then
a straight run over the Dutch coast south of Beveland into the North Sea. After
forty-four minutes flying time, change to Channel F and call Lakenheath Control
to give you a steers. Fourteen minutes later you'll be overhead Lakenheath.
After that, follow instructions, and they'll bring you down on a radio-controlled
descent. No problem all routine procedures. Sixty-six minutes flying time, with
the descent and landing, and the Vampire had enough fuel for over eighty
minutes in the air.
Swinging over Celle airfield at 1,000 feet, I
straightened up and watched the needle on my electric compass settle happily
down on a course of 260 degrees. The nose was pointing towards the black
freezing vault of the night sky, studded with stars so brilliant they flickered
their white fire against the eyeballs. Below, the black-white map of north
Germany was growing smaller, the dark masses of the pine forests blending into
the white expanses of the fields. Here and there a village or small town
glittered with lights. Down there amid the gaily lit streets the carol singers
would be out, knocking on the holly-studded doors to sing Silent Night and
collect pfennigs for charity. The Westphalian housewives would be preparing
hams and geese.
Four hundred miles ahead of me the story
would be the same, the carols in my own language but many of the tunes the
same, and it would be turkey instead of goose. But whether you call it
Weihnachten or Christmas, it's the same all over the Christian world, and it
was good to be going home.
From Lakenheath I knew I could get a lift
down to London in the liberty bus, leaving just after midnight; from London I
was confident I could hitch a lift to my parents home in Kent. By breakfast
time I'd be celebrating with my own family. The altimeter said 27,000 feet. I
eased the nose forward, reduced throttle setting to give me an airspeed of 485
knots, and held her steady on 260 degrees. Somewhere beneath me in the gloom
the Dutch border would be slipping away, and I had been airborne for twenty-one
minutes. No problem.
The problem started ten minutes out over the
North Sea, and it started so quietly that it was several minutes before I
realized I had one at all. For some time I had been unaware that the low hum
coming through my headphones into my ears had ceased, to be replaced by the
strange nothingness of total silence. I must have been failing to concentrate,
my thoughts being of home and my waiting family. The first thing I knew was
when I flicked a glance downwards to check my course on the compass. Instead of
being rock steady on 260 degrees, the needle was drifting lazily round the
clock, passing through east, west, south and north with total impartiality.
I swore a most unseasonal sentiment against
the compass and the instrument fitter who should have checked it for 100 per
cent reliability. Compass failure at night, even a brilliant moonlit night such
as the one beyond the cockpit perspex, was no fun. Still, it was not too
serious; I could call up Lakenheath in a few minutes, and they would give me a
GCA Ground Controlled Approach the second-by-second instructions that a
well-equipped airfield can give a pilot to bring him home in the worst of
weathers, following his progress on ultra-precise radar screens, watching him
descend all the way to the tarmac, tracing his position in the sky yard by yard
and second by second. I glanced at my watch: thirty-four minutes airborne. I
could try to raise Lakenheath now, at the outside limit of my radio range.
Before trying Lakenheath, it would be correct
procedure to inform Channel D, to whom I was tuned, of my little problem, so
they could advise Lakenheath I was on my way without a compass. I pressed the
transmit button and called.
"Celle Charlie Delta, Celle Charlie
Delta, calling North Beveland Control..."
I stopped. There was no point in going on.
Instead of the lively crackle of static and the sharp sound of my own voice
coming back into my own ears, there was a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask.
My own voice speaking...and going nowhere. I tried again. Same result. Far back
across the wastes of the black and bitter North Sea, in the warm cheery
concrete complex of North Beveland Control, men sat back from their control
panel, chatting and sipping their steaming coffee and cocoa. And they could not
hear me. The radio was dead.
Fighting down the rising sense of panic that
can kill a pilot faster than anything else, I swallowed and slowly counted to
ten. Then I switched to Channel F and tried to raise Lakenheath, ahead of me
amid the Suffolk countryside, lying in its forest of pine trees south of
Thetford, beautifully equipped with its GCA system for bringing home lost
aircraft. On Channel F the radio was as dead as ever. My own muttering into the
oxygen mask was smothered by the surrounding rubber. The steady whistle of my
own jet engine behind me was my only answer.
It's a very lonely place, the sky, even more
so the sky on a winter's night. And a single-seater jet fighter is a lonely
home, a tiny steel box held aloft on stubby wings, hurled through the freezing
emptiness by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousand horses
every second that it burns. But the loneliness is offset, canceled out, by the
knowledge that at the touch of a button on the throttle the pilot can talk to
other human beings, people who care about him, men and women who staff a
network of stations across the world; just one touch of that button, the
transmit button, and scores of them in control towers across the land that are
tuned to his channel can hear him call for help. When the pilot transmits, on
every one of those screens a line of light streaks from the centre of the
screen to the outside rim, which is marked with figures, from One to Three
Hundred and Sixty the number of degrees in a complete compass. Where the streak
of light hits the ring, that is where the aircraft lies in relation to the
control tower listening to him. The control towers are linked, so with two
cross-bearings they can locate his position to a few hundred yards. He is not
lost any more. People begin working to bring him down.
The radar operators pick up the little dot he
makes on their screen from all the other dots; they call him up and give him
instructions. Begin your descent now, Charlie Delta. We have you now.... Warm,
experienced voices, voices who control an array of electronic devices that can
reach out across the winter sky, through the ice and rain, above the snow and
cloud, to pluck the lost one from his deadly infinity and bring him down to the
flare-lit runway that means home and life itself.
When the pilot transmits. But for that he
must have a radio. Before I had finished testing Channel J the international
emergency channel, and obtained the same negative result, I knew my ten-channel
radio set was as dead as the Dodo.
It had taken the R.A.F two years to train me
to fly their fighters for them, and most of that time had been- training
precisely in emergency procedures. The important thing, they used to say in
flying school, is not to know how to fly in perfect conditions; it is to fly
through an emergency and stay alive. Now the training was beginning to take
effect.
While I was vainly testing my radio channels,
the eyes scanned the instrument panel in front of me. The instruments told
their own message. It was no coincidence the compass and the radio had failed
together; both worked off the aircraft's electrical circuits. Somewhere beneath
my feet, amid the miles of brightly coloured wiring that make up the circuits,
there had been a main fuse blow-out. I reminded myself, idiotically, to forgive
the instrument fitter and blame the electrician. Then I took stock of the
nature of my disaster.
The first thing to do in such a case, I
remembered old Flight Sergeant Norris telling us, is to reduce throttle setting
from cruise speed to a slower setting, to give maximum flight endurance.
"We don't want to waste valuable fuel,
do we, gentlemen? We might need it later. So we reduce the power setting from
1o,ooo revolutions per minute to 7200. That way we will fly a little slower,
but we will stay in the air rather longer, won't we, gentlemen?" He always
referred to us all being in the same emergency at the same time, did Sergeant
Norris. I eased the throttle back and watched the rev-counter. But it too was
an electrical instrument, and I had lost the lot when the fuse went. I judged
by engine note when the Goblin was turning over at about 7200 rpm, and felt the
aircraft slow down. The nose dropped fractionally, so I adjusted the
flight-trim to keep her straight and level.
The main instruments in front of a pilot's
eyes are six, including the compass. The other five are the airspeed indicator,
the altimeter, the bank indicator (which tells him if he's banking, i.e."
turning, to left or right), the slip indicator (which tells him if he's skidding
crabwise across the sky) and the vertical speed indicator (which tells him if
he's diving or climbing and if so how fast). The last three of these are
electrically operated, and they had gone the same way as my compass. That left
me with the two pressure-operated instruments, airspeed indicator and
altimeter. In other words, I knew how fast I was going and how high I was.
It is perfectly possible to land an aircraft
with only these two instruments, judging the rest by those old navigational
aids, the human eyes. Possible, that is, in conditions of brilliant weather, by
daylight and with no cloud in the sky. It is possible, just possible though not
advisable, to try and navigate a fast-moving jet by pilotage, using the eyes,
looking down and identifying the curve of the coast where it makes an easily
recognizable pattern, spotting a strange-shaped reservoir, the glint of a river
that the map strapped to the thigh says can only be the Ouse, or the Trent, or
the Thames. From lower down it is possible to differentiate Norwich Cathedral
tower from Lincoln Cathedral tower, if you know the countryside intimately. By
night it is not possible.
The only things that show up at night, even a
bright moonlit night, are the lights. These have patterns when seen from the
sky. Manchester looks different from Birmingham; Southampton can be recognized
from the shape of its massive harbour and the Solent, cut out in black (the sea
shows up black) against the carpet of the city's lights. I knew Norwich very
well, and if I could identify the great curving bulge of the Norfolk coastline
from Lowestoft, round through Yarmouth to Cromer, I could find Norwich, the
only major sprawl of lights set twenty miles inland from all points on the
coast. Five miles north of Norwich I knew was the fighter airfield of Merriam
Saint George, whose red indicator beacon would be blipping out its Morse
identification signal into the night. There, if they only had the sense to
switch on the airfield lights when they heard me screaming at low level up and
down the airfield, I could land safely.
I began to let the Vampire down slowly
towards the oncoming coast, my mind feverishly working out how far behind
schedule I was through the reduced speed. My watch told me forty-three minutes
airborne. The coast of Norfolk had to be somewhere ahead of my nose, six miles
below. I glanced up at the full moon, like a searchlight in the glittering sky,
and thanked her for her presence.
As the fighter slipped towards Norfolk the
sense of loneliness gripped me tighter and tighter. All those things that had
seemed so beautiful as I had climbed away from the Westphalian airfield now
seemed my worst enemies. The stars were no longer impressive in their
brilliance; I thought of their hostility, sparkling away there in the timeless,
lost infinities, of endless sub-zero space. The night sky, its stratospheric
temperature fixed, night and day alike, at an unchanging fifty-six degrees
below zero, became in my mind a limitless prison creaking with the cold. Below
me lay the worst of them all, the heavy brutality of the North Sea, waiting to
swallow up me and my plane and bury us for endless eternity in a liquid crypt
where nothing moved, nor would ever move again. And no one would ever know.
At 15,000 feet and still diving, I began to
realize that a fresh, and for me the last, enemy had entered the field. There
was no ink-black sea three miles below me, no necklace of twinkling seaside
lights somewhere up ahead. Far away, to right and left, ahead and no doubt
behind me, the light of the moon reflected on a flat and endless sea of white.
Perhaps only a hundred, two hundred, feet thick, but enough. Enough to blot out
all vision, enough to kill me. The East Anglian fog had moved in.
As I had flown westwards from Germany a
slight breeze, unforeseen by the weather men, had sprung up blowing from the
North Sea towards Norfolk.
During the previous day the flat, open ground
of East Anglia had been frozen hard by the wind and the sub-zero temperatures.
During the evening the wind had moved a belt of slightly warmer air off the
North Sea and on to the plains of East Anglia. There, coming in contact with
the ice-cold earth, the trillions of tiny moisture particles in the sea air had
vapourized, forming the kind of fog that can blot out five counties in a matter
of thirty minutes. How far westward it stretched I could not tell; to the West
Midlands, perhaps, nudging up against the eastern slopes of the Pennines? There
was no question of trying to overfly the fog to the westwards; without
navigational aids or radio, I would be lost over strange, unfamiliar country.
Also out of the question was to try and fly back to Holland, to land at one of
the Dutch air force bases along the coast there; I had not the fuel. Relying
only on my eyes to guide me, it was a question of landing at Merriam Saint
George or dying amid the wreckage of the Vampire somewhere in the fog-wreathed
fens of Norfolk.
At 10,000 feet I pulled out of my dive,
increasing power slightly to keep myself airborne, using up more of my precious
fuel. Still a creature of my training, I recalled the instructions of Flight
Sergeant Norris again.
"When we are totally lost above unbroken
cloud, gentlemen, we must consider the necessity of bailing out of our
aircraft, must we not?"
Of course, Sergeant. Unfortunately the Martin
Baker ejector seat cannot be fitted to the single seat Vampire which is
notorious for being almost impossible to bale out of, the only two successful
candidates living lost their legs in the process. Still, there has to be a
first lucky one. What else, Sergeant?
"Our first move, therefore, is to turn
our aircraft towards the open sea, away from all areas of intense human
habitation."
You mean towns, Sergeant. These people down
there pay for us to fly for them, not to drop a screaming monster of ten tons
of steel on top of them on Christmas Eve. There are kids down there, schools,
hospitals, homes. You turn your aircraft out to sea.
The procedures were all worked out. They did
not mention that the chances of a pilot, bobbing about in a winter's night in
the North Sea, frozen face lashed by sub-zero wind, supported by a yellow
life-jacket, ice encrusting on his lips, eyebrows, ears, his position unknown
by the men sipping their Christmas punches in warm rooms three hundred miles
away that his chances were less than one in a hundred of living longer than one
hour. In the training films they showed you pictures of happy fellows who had
announced by radio that they were ditching, being picked up by helicopters
within minutes, and all on a bright, warm summer's day.
"One last procedure, gentlemen, to be
used in extreme emergency."
That's better, Sergeant Norris, that's what
I'm in now.
"All aircraft approaching Britain's
coasts are visible on the radar scanners of our early warning system. If,
therefore, we have lost our radio, and cannot transmit our emergency, we try to
attract the attention of our radar scanners by adopting an odd form of
behaviour. We do this by moving out to sea, then flying in small triangles,
turning left, left, and left again, each leg of the triangle being of a
duration of two minutes flying time. In this way we hope to attract attention.
When we have been spotted, the air traffic controller is informed, and he diverts
another aircraft to find us. This other aircraft of course has radio. When
discovered by the rescue aircraft, we formate on him, and he brings us down
through the cloud or fog to a safe landing."
Yes, it was the last attempt to save one's
life. I recalled the details better now. The rescue aircraft who would lead you
back to a safe landing, flying wing-tip to wing-tip, was called the shepherd. I
glanced at my watch; fifty-one minutes airborne, thirty minutes left of fuel.
The fuel gauge read one-third full. Knowing myself to be still short of the
Norfolk coast, and flying level at 10000 feet in the moonlight, I pulled the
Vampire into a left-hand turn and began my first leg of the first triangle.
After two minutes, I pulled left again, hoping (without a compass) to be able
to judge 120 degrees, using the moon as a rough guide. Below me the fog reached
back as far as I could see, and ahead of me also, towards Norfolk, it was the
same.
Ten minutes went by, nearly two complete
triangles. I had not prayed, not really prayed, for many years and the habit
came hard. Lord, please get me out of this bloody mess... no, you mustn't talk
like that to Him. Our Father, which art in Heaven... he'd heard that a thousand
times, would be hearing it another thousand times tonight. What do you say to
Him when you want help? Please, God, make somebody notice me up here, please
make someone see me flying in triangles and send up a shepherd to help me down
to a safe landing. Please help me, and I promise... What on earth could I
promise Him? He had no need of me, and I who now had need of Him had taken no
notice of Him for so long He'd probably forgotten all about me.
By seventy-two minutes airborne on my watch I
knew no one would come. The compass still drifted aimlessly through all the
points of the circle, the other electrical instruments were dead, all their
needles pointing at zero. My altimeter said 7,000 feet, so I had dropped 3,000
feet while turning. No matter. The fuel read almost one-eighth full say ten
minutes more flying time. I felt the rage of despair welling up. I began
screaming into the dead microphone.
You stupid bastards, why don't you look at
your radar screens? Why can't somebody see me up here? All so damn drunk you
can't do your jobs properly. Oh God, why won't somebody listen to me? By then
the anger had subsided and I had taken to blubbering like a baby from the sheer
helplessness of it all.
Five minutes later I knew, without any doubt
of it, that I was going to die that night. Strangely, I wasn't even afraid any
more. Just enormously sad. Sad for all the things I would never do, the places
I would never see, the people I would never greet again. It's a bad thing, a
sad thing, to die at twenty years old with your life unlived, and the worst
thing of all is not the fact of dying but the fact of all the things never
done.
Out through the perspex I could see the moon
was setting, hovering above the horizon of thick white fog; in another two
minutes the night sky would be plunged into total darkness and a few minutes
later I would have to bale out of a dying aircraft before it flicked over on
its last dive into the North Sea. An hour later I would be dead also, bobbing
around in the water, a bright yellow Mae West jacket supporting a stiff, frozen
body. I dropped the left wing of the Vampire towards the moon to bring the
aircraft on to the final leg of the last triangle.
Down below the wing-tip, against the sheen of
the fog bank, up moon of me, a black shadow crossed the whiteness. For a second
I thought it was my own shadow, but with the moon up there my own shadow would
be behind me. It was another aircraft, low against the fog bank, keeping
station with me through my turn, a mile down through the sky towards the fog.
The other aircraft being below me, I kept
turning, wing down, to keep it in sight. The other aircraft also kept turning,
until the two of us had done one complete circle. Only then did I realize why
it was so far below me, why he did not climb to my height and take up station
on my wing-tip. He was flying slower than I, he could not keep up if he tried
to fly beside me. Trying hard not to believe he was just another aircraft,
moving on his way, about to disappear for ever into the fog bank, I eased the
throttle back and began to slip down towards him. He kept turning; so did I. At
1,000 feet I knew I was still going too fast for him. I could not reduce power
any more for fear of stalling the Vampire and plunging down out of control. To
slow up even more I put out the air brakes. The Vampire shuddered as the brakes
swung into the slipstream, slowing the Vampire down to 28o knots.
And then he came up towards me, swinging in
towards my left-hand wing-tip. I could make out the black bulk of him against
the dim white sheet of fog below, then he was with me, a hundred feet off my
wing-tip, and we straightened out together, rocking as we tried to keep
formation. The moon was to my right, and my own shadow masked his shape and
form, but even so I could make out the shimmer of two propellers whirling
through the sky ahead of him. Of course he could not fly at my speed; I was in
a jet fighter, he in a piston-engined aircraft of an earlier generation.
He held station alongside me for a few
seconds, down moon of me, half invisible, then banked gently to the left. I
followed, keeping formation with him, for he was obviously the shepherd sent up
to bring me down, and he had the compass and the radio, not I. He swung through
18o degrees then straightened up, flying straight and level, the moon behind
him. From the position of the dying moon I knew we were heading back towards
the Norfolk coast, and for the first time I could see him well. To my surprise,
my shepherd was a De Havilland Mosquito, a fighter-bomber of Second World War
vintage.
Then I remembered that the Meteorological
Squadron at Gloucester used Mosquitoes, the last ones flying, to take samples
of the upper atmosphere to help in the preparation of weather forecasts. I had
seen them at Battle of Britain displays, flying their Mosquitoes in the
fly-pasts, attracting gasps from the crowd and a few nostalgic shakes of the
head from the older men, such as they always reserved on September 5th for the
Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancasters.
Inside the cockpit of the Mosquito I could
make out, against the light of the moon, the muffled head of its pilot and the
twin circles of his goggles as he looked out of the side window towards me.
Carefully he raised his right hand till I could see it in the window, fingers
straight, palm downwards. He jabbed the fingers forward and down, meaning, We
are going to descend, formate on me."
I nodded and quickly brought up my own left
hand so he could see it, pointing forwards to my own control panel with one
forefinger, then holding up my five splayed fingers. Finally I drew my hand
across my throat. By common agreement this sign means I have only five minutes
fuel left, then my engine cuts out. I saw the muffled, goggled, oxygen-masked
head nod in understanding, then we were heading downwards towards the sheet of
fog. His speed increased and I brought the air brakes back in.
The Vampire stopped trembling and plunged ahead
of the Mosquito. I pulled back on the throttle, hearing the engine die to a low
whistle, and the shepherd was back beside me. We were diving straight towards
the shrouded land of Norfolk. I glanced at my altimeter: 2,000 feet, still
diving.
He pulled out at three hundred feet, the fog
was still below us. Probably the fog bank was only from the ground to 1oo feet
up, but that was more than enough to prevent a plane from landing without a
GCA. I could imagine the stream of instructions coming from the radar hut into
the earphones of the man flying beside me, eighty feet away through two panes
of perspex and a wind stream of icy air moving between us at 28o knots. I kept
my eyes on him, for mating as closely as possible, afraid of losing sight for
an instant, watching for his every hand-signal. Against the white fog, even as
the moon sank, I had to marvel at the beauty of his aircraft; the short nose
and bubble cockpit, the blister of perspex right in the nose itself, the long,
lean, underslung engine pods, each housing a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, a
masterpiece of craftsmanship, snarling through the night towards home. Two
minutes later he held up his clenched left fist in the window, then opened the
fist to splay all five fingers against the glass. Please lower your
undercarriage. I moved the lever downwards and felt the dull thunk as all three
wheels went down, happily powered by hydraulic pressure and not dependent on
the failed electrical system.
The pilot of the shepherd aircraft pointed
down again, for another descent, and as he jinked in the moonlight I caught
sight of the nose of the Mosquito. It had the letters J K painted on it, large
and black. Probably for call-sign Juliet Kilo. Then we were descending again,
more gently this time.
He leveled out just above the fog layer, so
low the tendrils of candy-floss were lashing at our fuselages, and we went into
a steady circular turn. I managed to flick a glance at my fuel gauge: it was on
zero, flickering feebly. For God's sake, hurry up, I prayed, for if my fuel
failed me now there would be no time to climb to the minimum 500 feet needed
for bailing out. A jet fighter at 100 feet without an engine is a death-trap
with no chances for survival.
For two or three minutes he seemed content to
hold his slow circular turn, while, the sweat broke out behind my neck and
began to run in streams down my back, gumming the light nylon flying suit to my
skin.
HURRY UP, MAN, HURRY.
Quite suddenly he straightened out, so fast I
almost lost him by continuing to turn. I caught him a second later and saw his
left hand flash the dive signal to me. Then he dipped towards the fog bank, I
followed, and we were in it, a shallow, flat descent, but a descent nevertheless,
and from a mere hundred feet, towards nothing.
To pass out of even dimly lit sky into cloud
or fog is like passing into a bath of grey cotton wool. Suddenly there is
nothing but the grey whirling strands, a million tendrils reaching out to trap
and strangle you, each one touching the cockpit cover with quick caress then
disappearing back into nothingness. The visibility was down to near zero, no
shape, no size, no form, no substance. Except that dimly off my left wing-tip,
now only forty feet away, was the form of a Mosquito flying with absolute
certainty towards something I could not see. Only then did I realize he was
flying without lights. For a second I was amazed, horrified by my discovery;
then I realized the wisdom of the man. Lights in fog are treacherous,
hallucinatory, mesmeric. You can get attracted to them, not knowing whether
they are forty or a hundred feet away from you. The tendency is to move towards
them; for two aircraft in the fog, one flying formation on the other, that
could spell disaster. The man was right.
Keeping formation with him, I knew he was
slowing down, for I too was easing back the throttle, dropping and slowing. In
a fraction of a second I flashed a glance at the two instruments I needed: the
altimeter was reading zero, so was the fuel gauge, and neither was even
flickering. The airspeed indicator, which I had also seen, read 120 knots and
this damn coffin was going to fall out of the sky at 95.
Without warning the shepherd pointed a single
forefinger at me, then forward through the windscreen. It meant There you are,
fly on and land. I stared forward through the now streaming windscreen.
Nothing. Then, yes, something. A blur to the left, another to the tight, then
two, one each side. Ringed with haze, there were lights either side of me, in
pairs, flashing past. I forced my eyes to see what lay between them. Nothing,
blackness. Then a streak of paint, running under my feet. The centre line.
Frantically I closed down the power and held her steady, praying for the Vampire
to settle.
The lights were rising now, almost at eye
level, and still she would not settle. Bang. We touched, we touched the deck.
Bang-bang. Another touch, she was drifting again, inches above the wet black
runway. Bam-barn-barn-babam-rumble. She was down. The main wheels had stuck and
held.
The Vampire was rolling, at over ninety miles
an hour, through a sea of grey fog. I touched the brakes and the nose slammed
down on to the deck also. Slow pressure now, no skidding, hold her straight
against the skid, more pressure on those brakes or we'll run off the end. The
lights moving past more leisurely now, slowing, slower, slower.
The Vampire stopped. I found both my hands
clenched round the control column, squeezing the brake lever inwards. I forget
now how many seconds I held them there before I would believe we were stopped.
Finally I did believe it, put on the parking brake and released the main brake.
Then I went to turn off the engine, for there was no use trying to taxi in this
fog; they would have to tow the fighter back with a Land-Rover. There was no
need to turn off the engine; it had finally run out of fuel as the Vampire
careered down the runway. I shut off the remaining systems, fuel, hydraulics,
electrics and pressurization, and slowly began to unstrap myself from the seat
and parachute dinghy pack. As I did so a movement caught my eye. To my left,
through the fog, no more than fifty feet away, low on the ground with wheels
up, the Mosquito roared past me. I caught the flash of the pilot's hand in the
side window, then he was gone, up into the fog before he could see my answering
wave of acknowledgment. But I'd already decided to call up R.A.F Gloucester and
thank him personally from the officers mess.
With the systems off, the cockpit was misting
up fast, so I released the canopy and pushed it upwards and backwards by hand
until it locked. Only then, as I stood up, did I realize how cold it was.
Against my heated body, dressed in light nylon flying suit, it was freezing. I
expected the control-tower truck to be alongside in seconds, for with an
emergency landing, even on Christmas Eve, the fire truck, ambulance and half a
dozen other vehicles were always standing by. Nothing happened. At least, not
for ten minutes.
By the time the two headlights came groping
out of the mist I felt frozen. The lights stopped twenty feet from the
motionless Vampire, dwarfed by the fighter's bulk. A voice called:
"Hallo there."
I stepped out of the cockpit, jumped from the
wing to the ground and ran towards the lights. They turned out to be the
headlamps of a battered old Jowett Javelin. Not an Air Force identification
mark in sight. At the wheel of the car was a puffed, beery face and a handlebar
mustache. At least he wore an R.A.F officer's cap. He stared at me as I loomed
out of the fog.
"That yours? He nodded towards the dim
share of the Vampire.
"Yes, I said, I just landed it."
"Straordinary, he said, quite
straordinary. You'd better jump in. I'll run you back to the mess. I was
grateful for the warmth of the car, even more so to be alive.
Moving in bottom gear he began to ease the
old car back round the taxi-track, evidently towards the control tower and
beyond them the mess buildings. As we moved away from the Vampire I saw that I
had stopped twenty feet short of a plowed field at the very end of the runway.
"You were damned lucky, he said, or
rather shouted, for the engine was roaring in first gear and he seemed to be
having trouble with the foot controls. Judging by the smell of whisky on his
breath, that was not surpising.
"Damned lucky, I agreed. I ran out of
fuel just as I was landing. My radio and all the electrical systems failed
nearly fifty minutes ago over the North Sea."
He spent several minutes digesting the
information carefully.
"Straordinary, he said at length. No
compass?"
"No compass. Flying in the approximate
direction by the moon. As far as the coast, or where I judged it to be. After
that..
"No radio?"
"No radio, I said. A dead box on all
channels."
"Then how did you find this place? he
asked.
I was losing patience. The man was evidently
one of those passed-over flight lieutenants, not terribly bright and probably
not a flyer, despite the handlebar mustache. A ground wallah. And drunk with
it. Shouldn't be on duty at all on an operational station at that hour of the
night.
"I was guided in,“ I explained
patiently.The emergency procedures, having worked so well, now began to seem
run-o'-the-mill, such is the recuperation of youth. “I flew short, left-hand
triangles, as per instructions, and they sent up a shepherd aircraft to guide
me down. No problem."
He shrugged, as if to say if you insist.
Finally he said:
"Damn lucky, all the same. I'm surprised
the other chap managed to find the place."
"No problem there,“ I explained
patiently. “It was one of the weather aircraft from R A F Gloucester. Obviously
he had radio. So we came in here in formation, on a GCA. Then when I saw the
lights at the threshold of the runway, I landed myself."
The man was obviously dense, as well as
drunk.
"Straordinary," he said, sucking a
stray drop of moisture off his handlebar.”We don't have GCA. We don't have any
navigational equipment at all, not even a beacon" Now it was my turn to
let the information sink in.“This isn't R.A.F Merriam Saint George” I asked in
a small voice. He shook his head."Marham? Chicksands? Lakenheath?"
"No, he said, this is R.A.F
Minton."
"I've never heard of it,“ I said at
last.
"I'm not surprised. We're not an
operational station. Haven't been for years. Minton's a storage depot. Excuse
me."
He stopped the car and got out. I saw we were
standing a few feet from the dim shape of a control tower, adjoining a long row
of Nissen huts, evidently once flight rooms, navigational and briefing huts.
Above the narrow door at the base of the
tower through which the officer had disappeared hung a single naked bulb. By
its light I could make out broken windows, padlocked doors, an air of
abandonment and neglect. The man returned and climbed shakily back behind the
wheel.
"Just turning the runway lights
off," he said, and belched.
My mind was whirling. This was mad, crazy,
illogical. Yet there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.
"Why did you switch them on?" I
asked.
"It was the sound of your engine,"
he said. "I was in the officers mess having a noggin, and old Joe
suggested I listen out the window for a second. There you were, circling right
above us. You sounded damn low, almost as if you were going to come down in a
hurry. Thought I might be of some use, remembered they never disconnected the
old runway lights when they dismantled the station, so I ran down to the
control tower and switched them on."
"I see," I said, but I didn't. But
there had to be an explanation.
"That was why I was so late coming out
to pick you up. I had to go back to the mess to get the car out, once I'd heard
you land out there. Then I had to find you. Bloody foggy night."
You can say that again, I thought. The
mystery puzzled me for another few minutes. Then I hit on the explanation.
"Where is R.A.F Minton, exactly?" I
asked him.
"Five miles in from the coast, inland
from Cromer. That's where we are," he said.
"And where's the nearest operational
R.A.F station with all the radio aids including GCA?"
He thought for a minute.
"Must be Merriam Saint George," he
said." They must have all those things. Mind you, I'm just a stores
Johnny."
That was the explanation. My unknown friend
in the weather plane had been taking me straight from the coast for Merriam
Saint George. By chance Minton, abandoned old stores depot Minton, with its
cobwebbed runway lights and drunken commanding officer, lay right along the
in-flight path to Merriam's runway. Merriam controller had asked us to circle
twice while he switched on his runway lights ten miles ahead, and this old fool
had switched on his lights as well. Result: coming in on the last ten-mile
stretch, I had plonked my Vampire down on the wrong airfield. I was about to
tell him not to interfere with modern procedures that he couldn't understand
when I choked the words back. My fuel had run out halfway down the runway. I'd
never have made Merriam, ten miles away. I'd have crashed in the fields short
of touchdown. By an amazing fluke I had been, as he said, damned lucky.
By the time I had worked out the rational
explanation for my presence at this nearly abandoned airfield, we had reached
the officers mess. My host parked his car in front of the door and we climbed
out. Above the entrance hall a light was burning, dispelling the fog and
illuminating the carved but chipped crest of the Royal Air Force above the
doorway. To one side was a board screwed to the wall. It said R.A.F Station
Minton'. To the other side was another board announcing Officers Mess'. We
walked inside.
The front hall was large and spacious, but
evidently built in the pre-war years when metal window-frames, service issue,
were in the fashion. The place reeked of the expression ‘it had seen better
days'. It had indeed. Only two cracked leather club chairs occupied the ante
room, which could have taken twenty. The cloakroom to the right contained a
long empty rail for non-existent coats. My host, who told me he was Flight
Lieutenant Marks, shrugged off his sheepskin coat and threw it over a chair. He
was wearing his uniform trousers, but with a chunky blue pullover for a jacket.
It must be miserable to spend your Christmas on duty in a dump like this.
He told me he was the second-in-command, the
CO being a squadron leader now on Christmas leave. Apart from him and his CO
the station boasted a sergeant, three corporals, one of whom was on Christmas
duty and presumably in the corporals mess also on his own, and twenty stores
clerks, all away on leave. When not on leave, they spent their days classifying
tons of surplus clothing, parachutes, boots, and other impedimenta that goes to
make up a fighting service.
There was no fire in the vestibule, though
there was a large brick fireplace, nor any in the bar either. Both rooms were
freezing cold, and I was beginning to shiver again after recovering in the car.
Marks was putting his head through the various doors leading off the hall,
shouting for someone called Joe. By looking through after him, I took in at a
glance the spacious but deserted dining room, also fireless and cold, and the
twin passages, one leading to the officers private rooms, the other to the
staff quarters. R.A.F messes do not vary much in architecture; once a pattern,
always a pattern.
"I'm sorry it's not very hospitable, old
boy, said Marks, having failed to find the absent Joe. Being only the two of us
on station here, and no visitors to speak of, we've each made two bedrooms into
a sort of self-contained apartment where we live. Hardly seems worth using all
this space just for the two of us. You can't heat them in winter, you know; not
on the fuel they allow us. And you can't get the stuff."
It seemed sensible. In his position I'd
probably have done the same.
"Not to worry, I said, dropping my
flying helmet and attached oxygen mask into the other leather chair. Though I
could do with a bath and a meal."
"I think we can manage that, he said,
trying hard to play the genial host. I'll get Joe to fix up one of the spare
rooms God knows we have enough of them and heat up the water. He'll also rustle
up a meal. Not much, I'm afraid. Bacon and eggs do?"
I nodded. By this time I presumed old Joe was
the mess steward.
"That will do fine. While I'm waiting,
do you mind if I use your phone?"
"Certainly, certainly, of course, you'll
have to check in."
He ushered me into the mess secretary's
office, a door beside the entrance to the bar. It was small and cold, but it
had a chair, empty desk and a telephone.
I dialed 100 for the local operator, and
while I was waiting Marks returned with a tumbler of whiskey. Normally I hardly
touched spirits, but it was warming, so I thanked him and he went off to
supervise the steward. My watch told me it was close to midnight. Hell of a way
to spend Christmas, I thought. Then I recalled how thirty minutes earlier I had
been crying to God for a bit of help, and felt ashamed.
"Little Minton," said a drowsy
voice. It took ages to get through, for I had no telephone number for Merriam
Saint George, but the girl got it eventually. Down the line I could hear the
telephone operator's family celebrating in a back room, no doubt the living
quarters attached to the village post office. Eventually the phone was ringing.
"R.A.F Merriam Saint George," said
a man's voice. Duty sergeant speaking from the guard-room, I thought.
"Duty Controller, Air Traffic Control,
please," I said. There was a pause.
"I'm sorry, sir," said the voice,
"may I ask who's calling?"
I gave him my name and rank. Speaking from
R.A.F Minton, I told him.
"I see, sir. But I'm afraid there's no
flying tonight, sir. No one on duty in Air Traffic Control. A few of the
officers up in the mess though."
"Then give me the station duty officer,
please."
When I got through to him he was evidently in
the mess, for the sound of lively talk could be heard behind him. I explained
about the emergency and the fact that his station had been alerted to receive a
Vampire fighter coming in on an emergency GCA without radio. He listened
attentively. Perhaps he was young and conscientious too, for he was quite
sober, as a station duty officer is supposed to be at all times, even
Christmas.
"I don't know about that,“ he said at
length “I don't think we've been operational since we closed down at five this
afternoon. But I'm not on Air Traffic. Would you hold on. I'll get the Wing
Commander (Flying). He's here."
There was a pause and then an older voice
came on the line. I explained the matter again.
"Where are you speaking from?" he
said after noting my name, rank and the station I was based at.
"R.A.F Minton, sir. I've just made an
emergency landing here. Apparently it's nearly abandoned."
"Yes, I know," he drawled.
"Damn bad luck. Do you want us to send a Tilly for you?"
"No, it's not that, sir. I don't mind
being here. It's just that I landed at the wrong airfield. I believe I was
heading for your airfield on a Ground Controlled Approach."
"Well, make up your mind. Were you or
weren't you? You ought to know. According to what you say, you were flying the
damn thing."
I took a deep breath and started at the
beginning.”So you see, sir, I was intercepted by the weather plane from
Gloucester, and he brought me in. But in this fog it must have been on a GCA.
No other way to get down. Yet when I saw the lights of Minton I landed here
assuming it to be Merriam Saint George"
"Splendid“ he said at length.
“Marvellous bit of flying by that pilot from Gloucester. Course, those chaps
are up in all weathers. It's their job. What do you want us to do about
it?"
I was getting exasperated. Wing commander he
might have been, but he had had a skinful this Christmas Eve.
"I am ringing to alert you to stand down
your radar and traffic control crews, sir. They must be waiting for a Vampire
that's never going to arrive. It's already arrived here at Minton."
"But we're closed down," he said.
"We shut all the systems down at five o'clock. There's been no call for us
to turn out."
"But Merriam Saint George has a
GCA," I protested. "I know we have," he shouted back. "But
it hasn't been used tonight. It's been shut down since five o'clock."
I asked the next and last question slowly and
carefully.
"Do you know, sir, where is the nearest
R.A.F station that will be manning 121.5 band throughout the night, the nearest
station to here that maintains twenty-four-hour emergency listening?" The
international aircraft emergency frequency is 121.5 megacycles.
"Yes," he said equally slowly. "To the west, R.A.F Marham. To
the south, R.A.F Lakenheath. Good night to you. Happy Christmas."
He put the phone down. I sat back and
breathed deeply. Marham was forty miles away on the other side of Norfolk.
Lakenheath was forty miles to the south, in Suffolk. On the fuel I was
carrying, not only could I not have made Merriam Saint George, it wasn't even
open. So how could I ever have got to Marham or Lakenheath? And I had told that
Mosquito pilot that I only had five minutes fuel left. He had acknowledged that
he understood. In any case, he was flying far too low after we dived into the
fog ever to fly forty miles like that. The man must have been mad.
It began to dawn on me that I didn't really
owe my life to the weather pilot from Gloucester, but to Flight Lieutenant
Marks, beery, bumbling old passed-over Flight Lieutenant Marks, who couldn't
tell one end of an aircraft from another ,but who had run four hundred yards
through the fog to switch on the lights of an abandoned runway because he heard
a jet engine circling overhead too close to the ground. Still, the Mosquito
must be back at Gloucester by now, and he ought to know that despite everything
I was alive.
"Gloucester?" said the operator.
"At this time of night?"
"Yes, I replied firmly, Gloucester, at
this time of night."
One thing about weather squadrons, they're
always on duty. The duty meteorologist took the call. I explained the position
to him.
"I'm afraid there must be some mistake,
Flying Officer," he said. "It could not have been one of ours."
"Look, that is R.A.F Gloucester,
right?"
"Yes, it is. Duty Met. Officer
speaking."
"Fine. And your unit flies Mosquitoes to
take pressure and temperature readings at altitude, right?"
"Wrong, "he said. "We used to
use Mosquitoes. They went out of service three months ago. We now use
Canberras."
I sat holding the telephone, staring at it in
disbelief. Then an idea came to me.
"What happened to them?" I asked.
He must have been an elderly boffin of great courtesy and patience to tolerate
darn fool questions at this hour of the night.
"They were scrapped, I think, or sent
off to museums, more likely. They're getting quite rare nowadays, you know."
"I know, I said. Could one of them have
been sold privately?"
"I suppose it's possible," he said
at length. “It would depend on Air Ministry policy. But I think they went to
aircraft museums."
"Thank you. Thank you very much. And
Happy Christmas."
I put the phone down and shook my head in
bewilderment. What a night, what an incredible night. First I lose my radio and
all my. instruments, then I get lost and short of fuel, then I am taken in tow
by some moonlighting harebrain with a passion for veteran aircraft flying his
own Mosquito through the night, who happens to spot me, comes within an inch of
killing me and finally a half-drunk ground-duty officer has the sense to put
his runway lights on in time to save me. Luck doesn't come in much bigger slices.
But one thing was certain: that amateur air ace hadn't the faintest idea what
he was doing. On the other hand, where would I be without him, I asked. Bobbing
around dead in the North Sea by now.
I raised the last of the whisky to him and
his strange passion for flying privately in out-dated aircraft and tossed the
drink back. Flight Lieutenant Marks put his head round the door.
"Your room's ready," he said.
Number Seventeen, just down the corridor. Joe's making up a fire for you now.
The bath water's heating. If you don't mind, I think I'll turn in. Will you be
all right on your own?"
I greeted him with more friendliness than
last time, which he deserved.
"Sure, I'll be fine. Many thanks for all
your help." I took my helmet and wandered down the corridor, flanked with
the numbers of the bedrooms of bachelor officers long since posted elsewhere.
From the door of Seventeen a bar of light shone out into the passage. As I
entered the room an old man rose from his knees in front of the fireplace. He
gave me a start. Mess stewards are usually R.A.F serving men. This one was near
seventy, and obviously a locally recruited civilian employee.
"Good evening, sir,“ he said. “I'm Joe,
sir. I'm the mess steward."
"Yes, Joe, Mr. Marks told me about you.
Sorry to cause you so much trouble at this hour of the night. I just dropped
in, as you might say."
"Yes, Mr. Marks told me. I'll have your
room ready directly. Soon as this fire burns up, it'll be quite cosy”
The chill had not been taken off the room,
and I shivered in the nylon flying suit. I should have asked Marks for the loan
of a sweater, but had forgotten.
I elected to take my lonely evening meal in
my room, and while Joe went to fetch it I had a quick bath, for the water was
by now reasonably hot. While I toweled myself down and wrapped the old but warm
dressing gown that old Joe had brought with him round me, he set out a small
table and placed a plate of sizzling bacon and eggs on it. By now the room was
comfortably warm, the coal fire burning brightly, the curtains drawn. While I
ate, which took only a few minutes, for I was ravenously hungry, the old
steward stayed to talk.
"You been here long, Joe? I asked him,
more out of politeness than genuine interest.
"Oh, yes, sir, nigh on twenty years;
since just before the war when the station opened."
"You've seen some changes, eh? Wasn't
always like this."
"That it wasn't, sir, that it
wasn't." And he told me of the days when the rooms were crammed with eager
young pilots, the dining room noisy with the clatter of plates and cutlery, the
bar roaring with bawdy songs; of months and years when the sky above the
airfield crackled and snarled to the sound of piston engines driving planes to
war and bringing them back again.
While he talked I finished my meal and
emptied the remainder of the half-bottle of red wine he had brought from the
bar store. A very good steward was Joe. After finishing I rose from the table,
fished a cigarette from the pocket of my flying suit, lit it and sauntered
round the room. The steward began to tidy up the plates and the glass from the
table. I halted before an old photograph in a frame, standing alone on the
mantel shelf above the crackling fire. I stopped with my cigarette half raised
to my lips, feeling the room go suddenly cold.
The photo was old and stained, but behind its
glass it was still clear enough. It showed a young man of about my own years,
in his early twenties, dressed in flying gear. But not the blue nylon suits and
gleaming plastic crash helmet of today. He wore thick sheepskin-lined boots,
rough serge trousers and the heavy sheepskin zip-up jacket. From his left hand
dangled one of the soft-leather flying helmets they used to wear, with goggles
attached, instead of the modern pilot's tinted visor. He stood with legs apart,
right hand on hip, a defiant stance, but he was not smiling. He stared at the
camera with grim intentness. There was something sad about the eyes.
Behind him, quite clearly visible, stood his
aircraft. There was no mistaking the lean, sleek silhouette of the Mosquito
fighter-bomber, nor the two low-slung pods housing the twin Merlin engines that
gave it its remarkable performance. I was about to say something to Joe when I
felt the gust of cold air on my back. One of the windows had blown open and the
icy air was rushing in.
"I'll close it, sir," the old man
said, and made to put all the plates back down again.
"No, I'll do it."
It took me two strides to cross to where the
window swung on its steel frame. To get a better hold I stepped inside the
curtain and stared out. The fog swirled in waves around the old mess building,
disturbed by the current of warm air coming from the window. Somewhere, far
away in the fog, I thought I heard the snarl of engines. There were no engines
out there, just a motor cycle of some farm boy, taking leave of his sweetheart
across the fens. I closed the window, made sure it was secure, and turned back
into the room.
"Who's the pilot, Joe?"
"The pilot, sir?"
I nodded towards the lonely photograph on the
mantel shelf
"Oh, I see, sir. That's a photo of Mr.
Kavanagh. He was here during the war, sir."
He placed the wineglass on top of the topmost
plate in his hands.
"Kavanagh?" I walked back to the
picture and studied it closely.
"Yes, sir. An Irish gentleman. A very
fine man, if I may say so. As a matter of fact, sir, this was his room."
"What squadron was that, Joe?" I
was still peering at the aircraft in the background.
"Pathfinders, sir. Mosquitoes, they
flew. Remarkable pilots, all of them, sir. But I venture to say I believe
Mister Johnny was the best of them all. But then I'm biased, sir. I was his
batman, you see."
There was no doubting it. The faint letters
on the nose of the Mosquito behind the figure in the photo read J K. Not Juliet
Kilo, but Johnny Kavanagh.
The whole thing was clear as day. Kavanagh
had been a superb pilot, flying with one of the crack squadrons during the war.
After the war he'd left the Air Force, probably going into second-hand car
dealing, as quite a few did. So he'd made a pile of money in the booming
fifties, probably bought himself a smart country house, and had enough left
over to indulge his real passion flying. Or rather re-creating the past, his
days of glory. He'd bought up an old Mosquito in one of the R.A.F periodic
auctions of obsolescent aircraft, re-fitted it, and flew it privately whenever
he wished. Not a bad way to spend your spare time, if you had the money.
So he'd been flying back from some trip to
Europe, had spotted me turning in triangles above the cloud bank, realized I
was stuck, and taken me in tow. Pin-pointing his position precisely by crossed
radio beacons, knowing this stretch of the coast by heart, he'd taken a chance
of finding his old airfield at Minton even in thick fog. It was a hell of a
risk. But then I had no fuel left anyway, so it was that or bust.
I had no doubt I could trace the man,
probably through the Royal Aero club.
"He was certainly a good pilot" I
said reflectively, thinking of this evening's performance.
"The best, sir“ said old Joe from behind
me. “They reckoned he had eyes like a cat, did Mister Johnny. I remember many's
the time the squadron would return from dropping flares over bombing targets in
Germany, and the rest of the young gentlemen would go into the bar and have a
drink. More likely several."
"He didn't drink? I asked.
"Oh yes, sir, but more often he'd have
his Mosquito re-fueled and take off again alone, going back over the Channel or
the North Sea to see if he could find some crippled bomber making for the coast
and guide them home."
I frowned. These big bombers had their own
bases to go to.
"But some of them would have taken a lot
of enemy flak fire, and sometimes they had their radios knocked out. All over,
they came from. Marham, Scampton, Cotteshall, Waddington; the big four-engined
ones, Halifaxes, Stirlings and Lancasters; a bit before your time if you'll
pardon my saying so, sir."
"I've seen pictures of them," I
admitted. And some of them fly in air parades. "And he used to guide them
back?"
I could imagine them in my mind's eye, gaping
holes in the body, wings and tail, creaking and swaying as the pilot sought to
hold them steady for home, a wounded or dying crew, and the radio shot to bits.
And I knew, from too recent experience, the bitter loneliness of the winter's
sky at night, with no radio, no guide for home and the fog blotting out the
land.
"That's right, sir. He used to go up for
a second flight in the same night, patrolling out over the North Sea, looking
for a crippled plane. Then he'd guide them home, back here to Minton, sometimes
through fog so dense you couldn't see your hand. Sixth sense, they said he had;
something of the Irish in him."
I turned from the photograph and stubbed my
cigarette butt into the ashtray by the bed. Joe was at the door.
"Quite a man, I said, and I meant it.
Even today, middle-aged, he was a superb flier."
"Oh yes, sir, quite a man, Mister
Johnny. I remember him saying to me once, standing tight where you are before
the fire: Joe, he said, whenever there's one of them out there in the night,
trying to get back, I'll go out and bring him home." I nodded gravely. The
old man so obviously worshipped his wartime officer.
"Well, I said, by the look of it, he's
still doing it."
Now Joe smiled.
"Oh, I hardly think so, sir. Mister
Johnny went out on his last patrol Christmas Eve 1943, just fourteen years ago
tonight. He never came back, sir. He went down with his plane somewhere out
there in the North Sea. Good night, sir. And Happy Christmas."
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