The Shepherd

“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.”