Nevertheless, there are those engaged in certain careers who consider a good day to be one in which they sit around on their backsides doing next to nothing. They would sooner see and speak to no one, despite their years of training and regardless of how much their inactivity makes the hours drag.
Hard to believe?
Just ask a doctor in a casualty ward, or any member of the emergency services. If their shift is one when the most exciting incident is a colleague spilling coffee on their lap, then that to them is a good day.
Being busy is a tragedy.
I’ve never worked in such a profession. I’m a man who always wants to be busy. Richard Reece, my old school pal and lifelong friend, was quite the opposite. He fell into one of the aforementioned categories.
Richard worked in a specialist role as a helicopter pilot back in the 1970s, a role for which he was destined.
When in school he was always the MAN. Cool, confident, brave. When we dared each other to climb a tree and jump to the ground, it was always Richard in the highest branches. When we played Chicken, he was always the last to move and with Knock and Run, he never flinched until he heard the footsteps in the hall. Perfect material for a pilot; tall, athletic, nerves of steel and a twinkle in his eyes that singled him out as having that certain something we can never put our fingers on, yet wish we had ourselves.
For a long period during his flying career Richard was with a unit known in the Royal Air Force under the abbreviation SAR, but commonly referred to as Search and Rescue. The SAR teams were not there for rescuing cats from trees. Their helicopters occasionally assisted fools in training shoes stranded on mountains, but more often stricken ships in troubled tides. In Richard’s case that was most specifically in the choppy waters off the coast of Wales and out into the Irish Sea. For much of the time he was based at RAF Valley on the Isle of Anglesey. The base has received some attention in recent years due to the Duke of Cambridge and his pretty new wife being stationed there, but in Richard’s day it was relatively unknown.
The units were originally set up during the Battle of Britain to assist downed air crews in the Channel. Spitfires and Hurricanes could be quickly replaced but experienced fighter pilots could not. By the 1970s, increased reliability and the lack of a Luftwaffe had rendered ditched aircraft something of an anachronism. The emergency call Richard’s unit received on a dull autumn afternoon more than thirty-five years ago wasn’t expected. It was unusual to be sent in search of a downed flight.
The crisis warning alerted them to the possibility of an aircraft having ditched in their vicinity. When the call was first received, Richard and his colleagues dreaded the thought it might be a large passenger jet with hundreds on board. It came as something of a relief when they discovered the aircraft responsible for reporting an engine malfunction before disappearing off the radar screens, was a Folland Gnat, a small training jet used by the military. It had just one person on board and had been en-route down the west coast of Scotland to their base on Anglesey.
One person or a hundred didn’t matter to the team. Richard recalled with pride how swiftly and precisely they’d clambered into their Westland Sea King, ready to depart within minutes of receiving the call. Soon the deep thumping rotors became steady in the afternoon breeze. The grass and litter around the damp tarmac of the landing pad swirled and danced in the turbulence. Up they climbed, fat but steady, a huge yellow bumblebee in the grey November air. Quickly the ground fell away beneath them and within a few minutes the browns and reds of the autumn land rushed from below. All about the bulbous helicopter was the black jagged surface of the Irish Sea, a cold and unwelcome devourer of so many souls. It was crowned by a matching iron-coloured sky, appearing as hard and bitter as the mountains on the land vanishing behind them.
With Richard calmly at the controls they headed at some considerable knots in the direction last reported by the stricken aircraft. As they reached the vicinity and began to make low level sweeps there was nothing unusual to be seen. When he retired a few years ago, Richard told me the search and rescue teams of modern times have at their disposal so much technological equipment, he would have given his right arm to have had half as much in his day. In comparison to his old crate, as he lovingly called her, modern helicopters would have been considered science fiction in his early years on the job. For his devoted team on that autumn afternoon there were no night vision goggles, infra-red cameras or satellite navigation and tracking. They were just a group of fit men with their eyes staring out into the dim light. Men infused with a hope they would see something against the bleakness that might be a lifebelt or raft holding a survivor, in preference to a piece of wreckage or floating corpse.
As long as they could stay out above the dark waves, they did. Night came upon them too soon, the large fuel tanks nearly depleted. There was nothing to be done but return to RAF Valley and wait until daybreak. They’d seen no signs to suggest the craft had gone down in the sea where radar contact had been broken, but then a speeding jet could continue for miles below radar level before finally hitting the water. It was not unknown for a lost aircraft to pop up where it was supposed to be going, the pilot saying; ‘Sorry about that chaps, had a little problem back there.’
It was however unlikely.
The team proposed widening the search area the following day. It was all they could do. They held on to the hope a cheery message would come through and order them to call off the search. The pilot might turn up safe and well; although the unlucky man would have to suffer the traditional embarrassment of dining in the officer’s mess in his pyjamas, a punishment reserved for those forced to ‘ditch their kite in the drink’.
By the time Richard’s crew returned from their first sweep, a little more information had been received regarding the missing flight. A few of them there, Richard included, were rather shocked to discover the missing pilot was a man they knew. His name was Alfred Lande. As a test pilot he’d been involved in the development of the pioneering Hawker Harrier jump jet in the late 1960s, before moving on to become a pilot instructor. A respected and renowned member of the force, he was a large and jovial man with a square chin and a proper handlebar moustache straight from the pages of a Biggles comic. He also possessed the largest hands Richard had ever seen, large enough he recalled, to hold a couple of watermelons.
As an aside to relaying the story of Lande’s infamous flight, Richard also told me an amusing anecdote about the older pilot.
It was at a training session in which he was involved some years before. He recalled him joking with some of the Royal Navy crews. The big man, hearty and forever pulling at the bushy handlebars beneath his nostrils, revealed the curious fact that despite serving for several years on the aircraft carriers HMS Eagle and later HMS Ark Royal, he couldn’t swim so much as a yard. Like a brick, had been his actual words. When asked if that worried him; given he spent his life surrounded by water, he’d said not at all. Apparently, he knew he was destined to die on land and not in the cold embrace of any sea. His mother had been of a superstitious bent, with a penchant for tea leaves and crystal balls. After her only son joined the Royal Navy, she’d consulted a fortune teller. The old crone assured the mother her son would never die on any ship; she could read it on the cards.
And if the cards said such was so, that was good enough for his mother.
On the quiet, those who listened to his tale were quite astonished that for so intelligent a man, Lande also appeared to believe the gypsy nonsense. The story did the rounds, as such things do, earning him the nickname Dry Lande; although nobody Richard knew ever dared use it to his face. Those big hands would have many a flat-nosed heavyweight throwing in the towel.
With mixed sentiments, Richard admitted to me he’d found humour in the story too, but later felt sickened as he remembered those half-forgotten details. With Lande missing, he prayed the gypsy had been right, but the evidence suggested she was very, very wrong.
My old friend recalled an uneasy sleep t
hat night, which was unusual for him. Even with the pressures of the world pressing down like a mountain, he always slept the sleep of angels. That night his rest was one plagued with a kaleidoscope of dreams. In fragments and snapshots, like a movie slipping in its projector, he was sitting with an audience of young pilots. All were very quiet, still and bolt upright on green plastic chairs with tubular legs. They watched Lande giving a lecture on a podium, his eyes fixed and unmoving whilst beneath the moustache his mouth spoke words Richard couldn’t hear. The man’s arms and great hands flayed wildly about, as if on nervous springs. All the while Richard was aware of freezing water lapping his ankles, deepening with every wave, but neither he nor the others about him could break their gaze from the man up front. Soon the water was up to his calves, his knees, his waist, as the entire room flooded. Salty water splashing at their chins, still they watched as the pilot instructor waved his hands, but still no sound could be heard, his dark staring eyes fixed and unmoving.
Richard only awoke, coughing and sweating, as the water entered his mouth.
The following morning the team resumed and widened their search. Needless to say the aircraft had not made it miraculously back and it was almost certain it had gone down in the unforgiving waters. There was little Richard could tell me about that second day of searching. Several sweeps of the area discovered nothing but the waves. Richard knew if the pilot was able to crash his bird on the surface with text-book perfection, it could remain intact and float for a time. The pilot would have a chance to escape, but there would be no debris spread over a large area for the search team to find.
At one point they did close in on some flotsam that from a distance looked to be a wing tip. Upon a low sweep it proved to be the lost board of a Welsh surfer, on its way to warmer climes.
Because of a certain camaraderie, they continued to search into the third day, although all knew it useless, even if Lande had bailed out or survived the impact. A big, strong, stubborn man, he wouldn’t be a soul to give up easily. Even so, two and a half days in the November embrace of the Irish Sea stacked the odds against him.
But odds are not a perfect science.
Almost at the same moment the team was about to surrender to the inevitable, a gloved hand was thrust in front of Richard’s face, pointing madly through the cockpit glass. Far off in a north by north-westerly direction, half a mile or so away, something bright orange was bobbing up and down on the jagged surface.
At once Richard changed direction and pointed the chopper on a straight path towards it. As they neared the object it became clearer. They could see the white circle of a face above the luminous collar of a life jacket.
Approaching and dropping in at low level, Richard saw two white dashes slowly moving backwards and forwards above the head of the person. With a feeling of exultation he realised they could only be the huge, plate-like hands of Lande as he waved to draw their attention. The handlebar moustache damply plastered across his upper lip was unmistakable. His face, although deathly pale against the darkness of the water, seemed to illuminate as they hovered in the air above him.
The waves were stirred by the downdraught of the rotors, the force aggravating an already angry sea. In the water instantly, the crew’s diver reached the survivor whilst the winch man placed the cradle down on the spot in seconds. They lifted both on board in super quick time, a lot of back slapping and congratulating going on amongst the crew as they did so. Richard had a quick glance backwards and saw the large form of the downed pilot. He was very pale and weak, but so grateful in his eyes as the crew wrapped him up, eager to force some warmth into his icy body.
Jonathan, Richard’s co-pilot and a colleague for some years, slapped Richard on the shoulder with delight as they turned the chopper around. As fast as the big crate would fly, it headed towards the Welsh coast. Jonathan radioed on ahead they were returning to base with a survivor and medical assistance was required urgently. Richard wanted to get his charge plumped up in fat hospital pillows, with a smiling, buxom nurse rubbing warmth into his limbs. Yet as hard as he pushed, the Sea King felt unusually ponderous as it snaked its steady way through the damp air. Richard tried to squeeze every last knot from the machine, but the helicopter felt drained and sluggish, the engine straining although the instruments registered no faults.
‘How is he?’ Richard asked Jonathan through the intercom as they came up to the land.
‘Not good, but he’s with us,’ he answered.
Within moments they were above the base, the blue lights of an ambulance already pulsing through the cold drizzle of the day, dancing like fireflies on the speckled raindrops of the cockpit glass.
As he landed, cut the power and unclipped his safety harness, Richard looked over his shoulder into the large bay of the Sea King. Instinctively he felt that something was wrong. Michael, the team’s medic was making no effort to hide the concern on his face as he struggled with the pale and still form beside him. It was a look Richard recognised from old. The ambulance crew was also there, pulling themselves on board and within a few seconds the rear of the Sea King was full of busy people. Richard averted his gaze, silently looking at the sky through the rain-specked canopy of the craft. Nobody had to tell him. He knew they had lost.
For some, being busy is a tragedy. It has been mentioned. For Richard it had been a hectic few days. Such was and remains the nature of the job. Most of us are fortunately detached from such events. They exist only in the column inches of a newspaper.
It has to be put out of mind. Richard was no monster, but to dwell on failures was a cancer. The next time would be a success. If it were not, then he wouldn’t dwell on that either. On he would go, every loss immediately forgotten, every success the fuel for the next. It was his job. Somebody had to do it.
A few days following the tragedy; his shift free to switch off as another carried their burden, Richard was sitting in the lounge of a local pub. It was a haunt the team often frequented when not on call. My old friend was having a few beers with his co-pilot Jonathan. Michael said he would be joining them later and sure enough he wandered in a little after nine o’clock. He quietly walked up to the bar. Instead of his usual Guinness, he bought himself a large scotch. Glass in hand, Michael walked listlessly to the table and sat heavily with a sigh. He was usually a cheerful man, I believe, with a round bright face and an endless store of jokes. To Richard it was obvious something was wrong and he asked him if he was alright.
Michael didn’t have an ounce of rudeness in his body, but it was some time before he bothered to answer. He stared into his glass as if it housed all the horrors in the world. Eventually, without looking at his two friends, he said quietly; ‘I’ve just come off the phone to Peter Kelly. Still hard to get my head around,’ he whispered, sipping his scotch. ‘Want to try and guess what he’s just told me?’
‘Not really, no,’ Richard said. ‘Why, go on. What’s happened?’
Michael again was slow in answering. ‘He was supposed to be performing an autopsy this afternoon, on that pilot you knew, the one we pulled out the drink the other day.’
‘Alfred Lande?’
‘Yeah, that’s him.’
‘What do you mean, was supposed to be?’ Jonathan asked, slightly less patient than Richard.
Michael at first remained silent, his mood deep, a disturbed countenance barely hiding his thoughts. ‘They went to the morgue where the body was stored,’ he said. ‘But when they opened the drawer in the refrigeration unit, it was empty.’
‘What do you mean, empty?’ Richard asked, unsure whether he’d missed something.
Michael took another sip of his scotch. ‘It was bloody empty. The poor bugger’s body has disappeared.’
‘It’s what?’
‘It’s gone. There was the smell of seawater; it had been there. But the tray was bone dry and your pilot friend conspicuous by his absence.’
There was silence for a second, a moment of dead air. Jonathan then made several comments that wer
e rather rude, which I don’t need to repeat. He finished off by asking; ‘Who the hell would want to steal a dead body?’
‘I never said it was stolen,’ answered Michael. ‘But it’s not there now, that’s all I know.’
‘Well he certainly didn’t stand up and leave, did he?’ Richard butted in as Jonathan began to swear again. The conversation went on for some time, but nothing other than the obvious workings of a sick and twisted body snatcher could be blamed for the odd disappearance.
News of the poor man’s missing body soon reached the local papers and then the wider national press. I myself vaguely recall it being on the BBC News many years ago. The Welsh police launched an investigation but to no avail. Despite many enquiries nothing was ever uncovered. The Vanishing Pilot as the press commonly referred to him, became just another news item to wrap up a fish supper. Wales’s very own Burke and Hare remained elusive.
Over the next few months my friend Richard mused on the subject now and again, but was generally too busy to give it much consideration. It was only brought back to his attention a couple of years later when an unusual conversation took place one evening in the very same bar.
It was Michael’s birthday and several of his friends were present, including Peter Kelly, the pathologist who was supposed to have performed the autopsy on Alfred Lande. Most people present were drinking and laughing. Peter, a fairly morose man who matched his patients, was having a conversation with a pretty but bored-looking nurse that Richard inadvertently overheard. He was telling the disinterested young lady the refrigerated compartment in the morgue, scene of the infamous body snatching, had in itself become something of an enigma to the staff in the hospital. Following the disappearance the compartment had been sterilised for re-use, but the smell of seawater remained, as if its aroma was infused within the metal. Worse still, as time progressed the stench became stronger and the whiff of salt water became tainted with a vile smell that could not be cleared despite frequent disinfections. Eventually, said Peter, the stench became so strong and putrid the compartment was sealed up. To that day it had never been used again.
Dark World Page 13
