Frederick Forsyth: The Shepherd

“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.