The Shepherd Read online

  “I was guided in,” I explained patiently. The emergency procedures, having worked so well, now began to seem run-of-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: “Damned lucky, all the same. I’m surprised the other chap managed to find the place.”

  “No problem there,” I said. “It was one of the weather aircraft from RAF 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 RAF Merriam St. George?” I asked in a small voice.

  He shook his head.

  “Marham? Chicksands? Lakenheath?”

  “No,” he said, “this is RAF 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 RAF 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 RAF station with all the radio aids, including GCA?”

  He thought for a minute.

  “Must be Merriam St. 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 leading me straight in from the coast to Merriam St. 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’s 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 onto 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 read RAF 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 prewar years when metal window frames, service issue, were in fashion. The place reeked of the expression “It has seen better days.” It had, indeed. Only two cracked-leather club chairs occupied the anteroom, which could have taken twenty. The cloakroom to the right contained a long empty rail for nonexistent 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 C.O. being a squadron leader now on Christmas leave. Apart from him and his C.O., 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 go 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. RAF 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 it in winter, you know; not on the fuel they allow us. And you can’t get the staff.”

  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 onto the other leather chair in the anteroom. “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, through a door beside the entrance to the bar. It was small and cold, but it had a chair, an empty desk and a telephone. I dialed 100 for the local operator and while I was waiting, Marks returned with a tumbler of whisky. Normally, I hardly touch 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 St. George, but t
he 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. After a few minutes, the phone was ringing.

  “RAF Merriam St. George,” said a man’s voice. Duty sergeant speaking from the guardroom, 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 RAF 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.

  “Where are you speaking from?” he said, after noting my name, rank and the station at which I was based.

  “RAF 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 St. George.”

  “Splendid,” he said at length. “Marvelous 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 St. 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 RAF station that will be manning one-twenty-one-point-five-megacycle 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, RAF Marham. To the south, RAF Lakenheath. Good night to you. Happy Christmas.”

  I put the phone down and 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 St. 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 had only 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.”

  “This is RAF Gloucester, right?”

  “Yes, it is. Duty 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 that hour.

  “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 myself. 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 outdated aircraft and tossed the drink down. Flight Lieutenant Marks put his head through the doorway.

  “Your room’s ready,” he said. “Number seventeen, just down the corridor. Joe’s making up a fire for you. 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 doorway 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 RAF enlisted 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.”
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  “Yes, Mr. Marks told me. I’ll have your room ready directly. Soon as this fire burns up, it’ll be quite cozy.”

  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 then reasonably hot. While I toweled myself down and wrapped round me the old but warm dressing gown that old Joe had brought with him, he set out a small table and placed a plate of sizzling bacon and eggs on it. By then 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 curiosity.

  “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 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 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 gray suits and gleaming plastic crash helmet of today. He wore thick sheepskin-lined boots, rough serge trousers and a 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 intensity. There was something sad about the eyes.