A moment of cinema history

There is always something magical about going to a cinema in a foreign land.  Never did I feel that more than on a hot and balmy August night in the mid 1970’s when I first saw the film “Zorba the Greek”     Now, I am not in the habit of seeing a movie when on holiday but I couldn’t resist the little open air cinema in the town of Heraklion on the Greek Island of Crete.

How can one ever turn down the opportunity of seeing a movie under the stars.

Little did I realise that night that I had stumbled into a minute bit of cinema and political history in the making.    “Zorba the Greek” – released in 1964, was adapted from the book of the same name written by the Greek national literary hero Nikos Kazantzakis.   Born in this small seaside hamlet, he now lies beneath a modest monument on a hill high above the town.

The grave of Greek literary icon, Niko Kazantzakis, rests above the Town of Heraklion.

“Zorba” is one of those late sixties black and white films that looked ancient the day it was released, complete with dancing dots and scratches on the image and something not quite right about the sound throughout the screening.

But no matter – I was here to see the story of a young English bookish character (played by Alan Bates) arriving in Greece to revive the fortunes of an inherited dormant Lignite mine and his belief in himself.  He meets Zorba, (played by Antony Quinn) a local character who spies an opportunity of work from this strange Englishman. They form a shaky alliance.  Throughout a tortuous adventure of getting the Lignite Mine up and running they form a deepening bond as Zorba teaches him about life, love and most importantly, how to Dance!

The screening of this film, on this night, in this cinema would have been unremarkable were it not for the fact that Greece had just emerged from nine years of military rule by a Junta who seized power in a coup in 1967.

They were a nasty lot – as they always are. Devoid of humour or humanity, they tolerated no opposition.  One such opponent, the left wing Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, dared to speak out against the Junta. As always, this pissed them off greatly – so,  like an Hellenic Taliban, they passed a law stating that his music could not be played in Greece – ever again. Theodorakis wrote the score for “Zorba the Greek”; consequently the film could not be shown in Greece.

  This night, was the first screening of the “Zorba” in nearly a decade.

The atmosphere was electric.  I had never heard such noises in an auditorium before.      People were shouting, clambering over seats, greeting each other with hugs and kisses.  Cold beer and Ouzo was handed forward over two rows of seats, friendly insults were exchanged over ten.  I had several bottles thrust into my hands during the evening.

Smoking, miraculously, was still allowed; the blue haze drifted into the branches of the trees that hung motionless above us, festooned with strings of coloured light bulbs.  The fragrance of Jasmine was strong in the warm night air.  A slow hand-clap began; signifying the audience’s demand that the film begin.  There was no time table in this sort of establishment.

The unseen projectionist began his magic.

The lights in the branches dimmed, but instead of the noise dying down, it increased; with whistles and cheers and shouts as the first black and white frames with the titles, flickered on the screen.

Then, like an unexpected drop in the wind, there was a few moments of silence suddenly replaced by the first chords of Bouzouki music that echoed on the open air walls.

Well! – The entire cinema audience erupted in a cacophony of screams and whoops and applause for the music they had been denied all those years.

I doubt I heard more than a dozen words of the film that night. When there was just dialogue, the audience talked and gossiped but when there was a single musical note, the audience’s enthusiasm knew no limits. Old women dressed entirely in black sat with cheeses, olives and breads in their skirt laps, ferociously eating, toothlessly laughing at the film; men stood in the space between the seats and screen, arms on each others’ shoulders, dancing in the traditional Greek style mimicking the actors in the film. Young girls and boys, under the cover of the festive excitement, stood in little groups by the trees, secretly seducing each other.  All manner of winged insects populated the beam between projector and screen.

 But it was the music that everyone had come for.   As Zorba and the Englishman danced away their woes on the beach after the disastrous end to their venture, so too did the good people of Heraklion, in that little open air cinema, dance away the last vestiges of a Junta’s ridiculous ban of a composer’s music.

Before anyone could believe it; the film was over.

As the lights came up, half the audience was already out the door carrying their party atmosphere out into the sleepy town..  Some stood around talking enthusiastically.   I found myself part of a group who insisted I joined them for food and drink. I eventually crawled out of a taverna as dawn inched up over Kazantzakis’s tomb wondering two things: where was my hotel and what the hell had just happened to me.

Still Life

This quiet window sits in the wall of a storeroom in an ancient farmhouse in Devon.

Generations of spiders and other insects have made this frame their home. The dusty bottles have faded over the years; they have grown dryer than any imaginable desert. Creepers and weeds have sprouted, grown and died against this brittle glass.

Only weeks ago, snow was piled up against the panes, arriving after the lashing of November rain and before that; high summer had brightened its aspect.

It is one of those windows where eyes have seldom lingered for long. Standing a moment in the gloom by this window, time seems to stand still. Far from the madding crowd; where the reach of the internet falters, and the mobile phone signal falls short, we become temporarily stranded in another world.

A chicken strolls by. He pauses a moment. Then suddenly turns 45 degrees and with head bobbing, walks off out of sight.

Henry V in the Garden of Eden

It is probably the best known and most quoted of Shakespeare’s dramatic speeches.     King Henry 5th astride his fidgety horse as it stumbles sideways, startled by the flapping flags & banners and the sounding of steel on the morning of the Battle of Agincourt.   He stills his horse with a pull up of the reigns; the steed’s shaking head snorting nasal steam on the cold air.

Facing his troops and lifting his long-sword high in the air like a lightening conductor, Henry reminds them of the strength and determination they need for the coming onslaught by the French who outnumbered the English six to one.

It’s a big Speech and a big ask; between stiffening the sinews and shoring up the breaches in the wall with our English dead the foot soldiers must keep in mind Harry, King, country and St George.   It’s a loud speech because it must reach the farthest ears of 7000 men at arms and energise them in the face of overwhelming odds.

Sir Ian McKellen

Sir Ian McKellen a great Shakespearian actor, but best known to the world as “Gandalf the Grey” in “Lord of the Rings” has done his Henry’s and Richard 3rd on stage and film.     Early on in his career he was touring the country’s provincial theatres; joining the local ensemble and putting on great plays for the local audiences.

One day  it was decided in a small town theatre that they would do Henry V,   Ian McKellen wondered how to do the great Agincourt scene, when he only had 6 actors to work with.    So he shifted the action to the night before the battle.  The real Henry V had ordered that every man remain silent without speaking throughout the night lest he gets his ear shaved off.     This was to deny the French any advantage in knowing where Henry’s men were and be able to aim a shower of arrows on them. Each side had over 3000 archers ; and to be caught under a shower of a thousand or more steel tipped arrows hailing down from 100 feet in the air was not a great prospect.

On stage, Henry V wandered over to the brazier and crouched down to warm his hands.  He begins the speech but in a whisper, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead”  Already his voice is climbing out of a whisper and into a loud voice.    The soldiers around the brazier bid him to hush. He does, but as the symphony of words begin to stir the King again, his voice rises and the others are almost pulling the king down lest he make them all a target for the French Archers.

That’s how he did Henry V on a shoe string.

Six hundred years after Henry roused his troops, on another morning,  other soldiers are standing around waiting for a battle to comence.   It is a temporary desert field camp 20 miles south of the Iraq – Kuwaiti Border.

The Ground War is about to begin against Iraq.

There had just been a sand storm, everyone was dusty.   Standing in the middle of the courtyard was Colonel Tim Collins comander of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish regiment.    Collins  was a seasoned soldier,  an Ulster Man who had fought in the 1st Gulf War, Zaire, Kosovo and Bosnia.

He was about to lead his troops into battle  -  his last Battle.

Gathered around him, as he pensively smoked on a  cigar, were the 800 men and women under his command.  Seventy-five per cent of his officers are from Ireland, but he is also in charge of a company of Gurkhas and soldiers from Fiji, Antigua, St Vincent, South Africa, Australia and Canada. The Northern Ireland-based Royal Irish Regiment is 40 percent Catholics from the Irish Republic.

The coming War was not popular at home so Collins wanted to reassure them of what they were about to do.   The reality of the scene, unlike at Agincourt, was that most of the troops were young men and women, who had never set foot in the desert before, not felt that Arabian heat on the backs of their necks and who knew not what lay ahead.

Speaking firmly but slowly, glancing around the faces of every man and woman making as much eye contact as possible, and all the while pausing to let the words sink in.   Unlike Henry, he didn’t have Will Shakespeare as his speech writer.

Colonel Collins spoke from the heart, without notes or preparation and this is part of  what he said…

We go to Iraq to liberate not to conquer.

We will not fly our flags in their country.     We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own.    Show respect for them.

There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly.    Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send.    As for the others I expect you to rock their world.     Wipe them out if that is what they choose.     But if you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory.

Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the  Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham.   Tread lightly there.     You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.    You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.    Don’t treat them as refugees for they are in their own country.    Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.      Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.

It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive but there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back.     There will be no time for sorrow.

The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction.   There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of hell for Saddam. He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done.   As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place.   Show them no pity.

It is a big step to take another human life.     It is not to be done lightly.    I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the Mark of Cain upon them.     If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family.

The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please. ………

As for ourselves, let’s bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there.

Our business now is north.

Our Business now is North

Calling Mr Sands

The first to be taken ill was a woman in her forties.  She had just arrived into the station on her usual train and was walking along the platform when she was overcome and fainted.   People stopped to help, and like in a large crowd no one seemed bold enough to take charge.  Station staff was summoned.

A second person a few minutes later wobbled and slid to the ground near the ticket office.  The staff at London Bridge commuter station were bemused; wondering what were the odds – two people in the same morning and within a matter of minutes of each other, falling ill. Then a third person went down

This was  an escalating situation which presented a problem for the Station Supervisor as he watched 3 huddled groups around collapsed passengers on his TV monitors. There is in force a little known procedure; should 3 or more unrelated people become ill anywhere on the Central London railway network – then the emergency services swing into action, suspecting a CBRN attack – isolate the situation and assume the worst.   He picked up the phone and enacted the procedure, and all hell let loose.  The paramedics, the fire brigade and police rushed to the station.  All trains had been stopped up the line.

A fourth man staggered and fell.   This time station staff held onlookers back and didn’t approach the man to help him.  They were ordered to wait for the paramedics to arrive and deal with the victim of – what?  Sarin Gas? Terrorist Germ attack? Chemical leak? No one knew.

For an hour the station remained closed and cordoned off.  Nothing untoward was detected.  So the station was released back to the staff and normal life resumed, if a little delayed.

It was soon established that these victims had over heated on the crowded trains.  A week earlier the temperature had been minus 4 degrees but this day had suddenly risen to 6 degrees.  The train heaters – mysteriously – were still running at full pelt and the overdressed commuters had been victims of heat stroke.

During the incident, people reported hearing several announcements on the public address speakers asking for “Mr Sands to go to platform  8” or the Ticket concourse or wherever he was needed.  Who is this Mr Sands?

In my late 20’s, I worked in a small local cinema as an Usherette in the afternoons.   I would guide the mostly aging clientele through the dark to their seats, but because I couldn’t drag my eyes from the screen, would often sit them on other people’s laps.

At this time, Britain was fusing a good deal of its bureaucracy with the European Union.  This meant that many English civil servants were sent over to work in Brussels.  Female staff were advised in a memo that should they find themselves in danger, especially if they were being sexually attacked they should raise the alarm by shouting “Fire! Fire!”

Shouting “Help rape!” or some such would alarm locals who may be inclined to back away, not wanting to get involved.  But people more naturally react positively to a warning of fire.

In the staff room of this little cinema was a notice instructing everyone what to do in the event of a fire breaking out in the theatre.  It read “Should a fire break out in the building, staff should at no time use the word “FIRE”.  The staff member should walk in quiet and orderly manner to the Manager and inform him that Sir, there is sand in the auditorium”   This was to prevent panic amongst the audience and allow for a controlled evacuation.

Theatres and cinemas were prone to fire breaking out:  Theatres because of all the hot lamps and copious amounts of flammable costumes and curtains and cinemas because of the extremely dangerous celluloid film.  All places of entertainment had large numbers of fire buckets that were usually filled with sand.

Sand soon became established as a common code word to denote danger in a public place.

So the next time you see someone rushing out of a railway station or a cinema screaming “Sand!  Sand!”  you’ll know exactly what to do.

Fidel, Fangio and Fred.

After a rather loud evening with the film crew, having to be back in the pit garages at the world Famous Silverstone motor racing circuit at 7.am was not my idea of fun.  We had just filmed three TV commercials with Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg and we were liberally celebrating the job done.   We still had Schumacher’s’ backup F1 Mercedes car.  It was to be picked up at 10am but the Classic car Grand Prix was coming in the next morning at 7, and being in charge of the film team, I was volunteered to go and guard this car until I could officially hand it back to Mercedes.

We didn’t want anybody interfering with this priceless car.

Well, I needn’t have bothered.  Over the next hour; trucks, vans and trailers arrived from nowhere and disgorged their contents.   The Pit Garages were rapidly being populated with every conceivable model of car dating back to the 1930’s.  Every few feet there was a small space created in which the classic racing car, its mechanics, the tools boxes and spare parts set up camp. Electric kettles and toasters were plugged in and breakfast began as guttural throbbing engines were turned over and tested.  By 8 o’clock, men who looked like they were born with engine oil on their hands were already sliding under raised cars making last minute adjustments.

Soon the garages smelt of petrol and oil that was just so heady.   Standing around keeping watch over Michael Schumacher’s car I chatted with one or two peopel who wandered over with mild curiosity to look at this £1m technological beast.   But they were soon gone; drawn back to their machines of bygone days.

Eventually the Mercedes truck arrived and took away the Schumacher car.   I was free to go for breakfast.  Wandering through the Pit Garages I stopped here and there and watched these enthusiasts and semi professional car teams getting ready for the afternoon 2012 Classic Car Grand prix.

I was given a mug of coffee by one small group who had an Alfa Romeo car.  I was told it was related to a model of a car made famous by veteran racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio from Argentina, one of the greatest racing drivers of them all and who had won the 1950 British Grand Prix at this very race track, in an Alpha.

Fangio dominated the first decade of Formula One racing, he was inducted into the Formula One Hall of Fame, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest racing drivers of all time and holds the highest winning percentage in F1, 46 percent –  winning 24 of 52 F1 races he entered.  In 1952 Fangio crashed and broke his neck.  But a year later he came back.  He was world champion five times – a record that remained unbeaten until Michael Schumacher, arrived on the scene, 46 years later.

Fangio driving for Maserati

These amazing drivers would, from year to year, drive for different manufactures depending on the deal.  Fangio drove for companies, Ferrari, Alpha Romero, The British Brabham Car Company and Maserati.

The German Grand Prix, Fangio third car back on the left, the two Ferarris in front.

In Fangio’s last two years when he became the world champion, he was back driving for Maserati.  He started the 1957 season with a hat-trick of wins in Argentina, Monaco and France, but had to retire with engine problems in Britain. In the next race in Germany he needed a six point lead to be able to claim the world title again.  He started the race in pole position (in the front section of cars at the start line) but as soon as the flag dropped he fell to third position behind two Fararris.  By the end of the third lap he had over-taken both with an 11 second lead.  He had started the race with a half full tank of fuel.  He expected he would need an early change of tyres so why carry that extra weight of fuel that could cost him precious seconds.  On the 13^th lap he pulled into the Pit enjoying an overall 30 second lead.  The tyre change and fuel top-up went badly and by   the time he shot out of the pit lane onto the circuit he was back in 3^rd      place and 50 seconds behind the lead Ferraris.  On the penultimate lap he got past both Ferraris again and shot past the chequered flag with a 3 second lead.   After the race, engineers inspected his car and found the suspension shot with the wheel pins seized up.  He’s pushed that machine beyond its limit.  This performance is considered as the greatest drive in the history of Formula One.

Fangio has another and more curious record to his name; that of being the only Racing Driver ever to be kidnapped for political purposes.

It happened in Cuba in 1958 when Fidel Castro and his comrades were plotting a revolt to overthrow the repressive American backed President Fulgencio Batista.   The Cuban Presidente played host to the Casinos and brothels of the Chicago and New York Crimes families.  Havana was the playground of the American moneyed classes; a gambling and frolicking weekend destination within easy reach by air.  It had become part of the American romantic dream.

As the song goes…”..sand in my shoes…sand from Havana..”

The Huge revenues generated by this Cuban playground stayed in the cophers of the El Presidente whilst most of the Island’s population went poor.  Castro lead a clandestine revolutionary group determined to overthrow the regime and establish a socialist society

Formula One was fast becoming an international prestige sport and Batista wanted it in Cuba.  He paid handsome sums for the world’s greatest teams to stage an event in Havana.

Fangio meets Batista.

The night before the race, Castro’s men walked up to Fangio in his Havana hotel bar, and at gunpoint took him hostage.   The plan was simple, if Fangio was not able to drive in the race it would be called off and embarrass Batista.  They afforded him every comfort their meagre funds would allow for the 24hrs of captivity in recognition of him being such a celebrity and an Argentine, they treated their Latin brother with quite some respect.  The race went ahead anyway and was won by Britain’s Stirling Moss.  Fangio was later released unharmed.

The following year Fangio ran his last season, took the world championship that year and then retired back to Argentina.  He remained in sporadic touch with his captors up to his death in 1995.

All the cars entered into these races were essentially hand built.  The mechanics would build an engine over a weekend, test it again and again and rebuild it the next week until they got it right.   Looking at these petrol heads working on their machines at Silverstone that morning, with love and concentration on their faces I see why they were not so interested in the computer monitored, corporatized machinations that is today’s Formula One.  Yes-  they still have the roar of the engines, the beautiful women, the canapés and the parties; but they don’t have that free spirited do as you please, anyone welcome of the early years.   In today’s Corporate Formula One they don’t have the “roll your sleeves up – amateur enthusiasm of the people in that Pit garage, I thought,  as I drank their coffee.

And they don’t have Fred Boon.

Fred Boon lived down the street from me when I was a child.  He was a larger than life character who was usually to be seen in an oily boiler suite with engine muck engrained into his hands.  He was a mechanic at Lack’s the local repair garage.  I would spend any time I could standing Lacks chaotic and filthy workshop as Freddie would fix the cars. He knew everyone and everyone knew him, always cheerful, always chatty.  He always seemed rxcited about what he was doing next.

One day he showed me some photographs of racing cars, some of them with him driving.  He promised to give me some pictures if I could be back there at 4pm the next day, “not a minute before or after..or I won’t give them to you”  next day I rushed down at 4pm.  “Ah too bad” he said “you are two minutes late”   It took a couple of weeks to get those pictures from him.

His other job was with the Lotus Engineering founded by Collin Chapman.  This world famous car was still being nurtured into life in a small workshop in Crouch End, London.   Engineer John Clairmonte wouldn’t have anyone else but Fred Boon working on his cars.  To them and all the other people in the experimental car world Fred was known as “Sorrento” because of his love of all things Italian and especially Alpha Romeos. He even sported a thin pencil moustache and wore a black beret just to look the part.

Today you couldn’t get into the pit garages on Grand Prix day even if you were Royalty, but back then Freddie would take a bag of tools to the track, mingle with the mechanics of an Italian team, making himself useful and soon he was helping to push a car out onto the grid.

Fangio enjoys the moment, and so does Fred just behind his head.

When it came to the winner of a Grand Prix sitting on his car with a magnum of Champaign to his lips, Fred Boon was invariably in the background just getting his face in.  He appeared in more magazines than most fashion models.

Fred had irons in many fires.  He was a film extra, and I remember we all went to the cinema because Fred Boon was an extra in it.  I don’t recall the film, but I can clearly see the scene of a theatre audience in the film, applauding.  Right there in the middle was Fred in his black beret yelling, cat calling and vigorously waving his arms.  He was somewhat over acting

Just behind the Magnum of Champaign, there’s Fred again.

Years later I met an old gentleman  in a small hotel where he was living out his retirement. He was sitting at the bar in a tweed suite and cravat; we got talking.  Somehow our meandering conversation reached a place where  Fred’s name came up.  “Good God” he said “Freddie used to be our family chauffer.  What a funny Chap”

Such a small world.

“Yes, old Freddie used take the car off for a whole day, to give it a ..”..proper service…”.. he would say, but we found out later he was running up to Silverstone or Goodwood  race tracks in it.   Gosh! ….. Old Freddie. … I often wondered what became of him”

So it fell to me to tell him what happened to Freddie.

Not long after seeing Fred Boon in the cinema  there was story about him  in our local newspaper,   saying that Fred Boon had been found dead in his flat.  There were circumstances.  Fred was found naked, chained to a chair, surrounded by mirrors leaning against the walls.   I giggled, but those older than me took a darker view and we were not allowed to discuss it any more.   That was the end of it.

I don’t remember how, but a year or two later I found out the truth of Fred’s strange exit from this world.  You see, he had got this notion that he could be an escapologist if he just practiced long enough and perfect his routine.  Because of his film connections he could get a foot into the entertainment world.   Perhaps he imagined himself as  ”The Great Sorrento”    He had discussed his idea with a few friends.

He contrived to chain himself securely onto a chair, and with the aid of the mirrors, and naked in case of the chains getting caught on his clothing, he would perfect his escape.  He didn’t.  He was trapped there for several days, and died.

Just like the cars, they don’t make ‘em like Fred Boon anymore.

All is calm, all is bright.

Tonight, miraculously I had got my three children into a church for the first time in I don’t know when.  Normally it would be easier to get them into a cold shower.  Their mother was singing in a choir at a Christmas Carol concert in St Andrew’s central church in Plymouth; foregoing the Xbox and the Facebook they came out to support her.

The church stands on a spot in the city, where there has been a house of worship in one form or another since the 8^th century.

In March 1941, the Church was bombed and badly damaged. Amid the smoking ruins a local headmistress nailed over the door a wooden sign saying simply Resurgam (Latin for I shall rise again), indicating the wartime spirit, a gesture repeated at other devastated European churches. That entrance to St Andrew’s is still referred to as the “Resurgam” door and a carved granite plaque is now permanently fixed there.

The repairs took a long time to complete and St Andrews was re-consecrated on the 30^th  November 1957, St Andrew’s Day.

An RNLI volunteer lifeboat his the waves on a mad dash to a rescue.

The Carol Concert was in aid of the RNLI – the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.  For those who do not know, the RNLI is the organisation that co-ordinates a network of over 340 coastal rescue lifeboats manned by unpaid volunteers who risk their lives at anytime of the day or night to rescue people and vessels that are in distress around our coastline.  These extraordinary men and women have day jobs, but when that blare of the coxswains’ horn blows (or their mobile phones ring in modern day) they drop whatever they are doing, rush to the lifeboat station and jump into a moving boat as it shoots down the slipway into rhe angry sea. They go wherever they are sent, regardless of the conditions, whatever the hour, however the distance to reach those who are in peril on the sea.  On rare tragic occasions; they do not return.

In their 150 years the RNLI crews have saved nearly 140,000 souls.  This year the Plymouth Lifeboat station has launched a crew 93 times.  They all returned safely, usually with a tethered boat in tow or rescued seamen on board.  Just like the New York Firemen; when that bell goes they don’t know if it’s a rubbish bin on fire or the World Trade Centre.  The commitment and dedication is just as great.

Man’s contribution to fellow man doesn’t get much better than this.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose thinking of these brave people as we sang “While Shepherds watched their flocks by night”

The Choir did “oh, Hand me down my silver trumpet, Gabriel”    The room was rocking!

Then there was a prayer.

The mature and deep sounds of the huge pipe Organ softly ushered us into Silent Night.  Standing next to my children and us all singing that most familiar and comforting of carols.  I was their age again.  I never can be sure where that Christmas hymn will take me, but tonight I suddenly remembered the legendary photographer O.Winston Link.

Link was a commercial photographer between the 1930’and the late 1980s.   He had a very particular style he self-consciously set out to present an idealized America, and although the true worth of these images wouldn’t be fully appreciated for many years.   In most of his advertising and corporate assignments he was photographing in his unique and distinctive way the end of a prosperous Appalachia — the end of small-town America.

Telegraph office, Norfolk & Western Railway, 1956

He trained as an engineer but you know how life is, he took up photography instead.  He was always in awe of the great Steam Railways of America.   In 1955 on an assignment to Roanoke, Virginia he came across the Norfolk and Western Railway, one of the last lines in America to change from steam to Diesel. That was it!  He was hooked and he dedicated all his spare time to photographing the men and machines of a railway system that was in the last throws before extinction. .  The Norfolk and Western board of directors, who realised the importance this; granted him unfettered access to their entire Railway to document its passing.

What made link’s railway pictures so special was that he shot them at night.   He once said “I can’t move the sun — and it’s always in the wrong place” He preferred to bring his own dash of light.

This presented enormous technical difficulties, not least of which; he couldn’t see the image the moment  he was photographing it – because he was using flash so all he could spy in the camera was mostly darkness.    Shooting most of his images on a 4×5 plate camera, which is a box with a lens on bellows and the sheet film had to be slipped into the back of the camera,   A protective slide would then be removed, revealing the sheet film to the lens.

O.Winston Link,(left) and his assistant George Thom with night flash Equipment. New York, March 16, 1956.

He would press the shutter and with the aid of the dozens and dozens of one-time use flash bulbs, he would illuminate a vast area and create the picture.  He never knew what the image would look like until a day or two later.  He would only ever get one chance.  Having taken most of the day to erect his elaborate lighting set-up, doing a retake was impossible.

Besides taking his pictures, Link would sometimes make audio recordings of the trains; which he later released  on disc with extensive sleeve notes about the locations and the engines.

Three weeks after St Andrew’s church in Plymouth was re-consecrated, O.Winston Link was scouting out a picture opportunity for another night shot and a sound recording, in the small prairie town of Rural Retreat, Virginia.

As he was watching Train 17 – “The Birmingham Special” roll through Rural Retreat, having planned do the picture of this service the next night, Christmas Eve, he heard the sound of “Silent Night” coming from a nearby Church.  Whoever was practicing the organ, Link felt ought to be on the planned recording of the train.   Next morning he found the person playing; it was Mrs Katherine Dodson who was the organist at the Grace Lutheran church.  She agreed to play for him that evening.

At  11.37 on Christmas Eve night 1957, station agent Mr J L Akers waved through the last train of the night; for almost nine minutes after taking this iconic picture, Link’s reel to reel tape machine recorded every click and rattle and blast of steam as the powerful J Class steam locomotive hauled its 17 cars through the town and out across the prairie until it became almost inaudible; and all the while, Mrs Dodson was playing Silent Night on the Church Chimes.

A week later the last steam service ran through Rural Retreat and the age of steam had come to an end in America.

That’s what ran through my mind tonight as we sang …”Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright….”

Merry Christmas.

_______________________________________________________________________

The rcording can be heard here: – http://tinyurl.com/chuurkr

Dancing Fleas on the Road to Lamu.

The news that crooks had just broken into the Natural History Museum annex at Tring in Hertfordshire, just north of London, to steal precious Rhino Horns caught my attention.

On the Asian black market these horns would fetch £240,000, where they would be ground to powder and sold for weird medicinal potions.  Fortunately, the robbers were thwarted by the museum curators who had replaced the originals with resign replicas after a spate of similar thefts from other museums.  Chuckling at the news story I was reminded of a pair long forgotten fleas.

Tring Museum now an annex of the London Natural History Museum

The Museum at Tring was a privately owned collection of Birds, Mammals and Insect from around the world and was the passion child of Lionel Walter – 2^nd Baron Rothschild, heir to the world wide Rothschild Banking Dynasty.  He reluctantly ran the bank during the late 1880’s, he didn’t make a big fist of it, instead always distracted by his real interest: Natural History.

Lionel turned the family home in Tring Park into a unique collection of birds, insects and mammals from around the world.   He was the only man ever to ride a carriage drawn by Zebras to Buckingham Palace.  Lionel was not a strong man, and although he made some trips to North Africa to collect species, he mostly paid other explorers to gather the collection for him.  By the time he opened the museum to the Public in 1892 he had the largest Natural History collection in the world.

Baron Rothschild proved that Zebras could be trained.

He never married but had several mistresses.  In 1932 he was forced to sell a majority of his rare stuffed bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History to pay off a woman who was blackmailing him.

His younger brother Charles, who took over running the family business – is the one really relevant to our story here.    Although he took the Bank into its most prosperous period he also had a parallel passion – insects!  He always dreamed of becoming a professional Entomologist, (indeed  he wrote his first scientific paper, on moths and butterflies, while still at school), but his real speciality was fleas: he became the world’s leading expert and assembled a collection of more than a million of the little things, (now housed in the British museum).

What these robbers missed were the fleas.  In fact, two fleas in particular, the fleas that are dressed as a pair of Mexican water carriers.   Had they taken them instead; they would then have joined a rare coterie of people who posses Dressed Fleas.

Dressed fleas are really a Mexican tradition.  Nuns would sit in the cool of the evening toiling under oil lamps and using a magnifying glass, they would glue the tiny bits of clothing onto the dead fleas.  In the hot afternoon Sun, they would sell them, to passing tourists for a very small sum.  A pair of these fleas was purchased by one of Baron Rothschild’s proxy explorers and put into his museum where they are still displayed.

The well dressed fleas at the Tring Museum.

I first saw them on a visit to Tring one afternoon when my partner at the time and I were planning our camping Safari to Kenya.  We had set up the tent we were taking by the river in Tring about 10 miles outside London..  We were testing our equipment.  We cooked with new the stove.  We lay in our light weight sleeping bags, with our head s outside the tent smoking and listening to the night sounds.  The radio was tuned to the BBC World Service.

The next morning, just to get us in the mood for our Safari, we went to the Natural History Museum to check out some stuffed wild animals;.  On the first floor where the head of the Giraffe on ground floor poked through, we wandered around the insect room.   Many of the exhibits were in display cabinets; each with a pair of wooden doors, and in order to see what was inside, one had to open the doors revealing a variety of very frightening bugs, insects and spiders.  I thought I was ready for the animals of Africa, but I had not once thought about the little critters.  The Lions and crocodiles will rip you apart in seconds; but the little ones will either frighten the bloody bejeebers out of you, or fill you with venom guaranteeing a slow, sweaty, paralyzing death.

The whole animal world is at Tring

I had to stop opening the doors on the display cabinets; I couldn’t take the shock of seeing another spider with legs that would span the Grand Canyon and colouring that reached down into my guts and twisted them tight.   I don’t like Spiders.  But I couldn’t resist just one more door.  Inside was something quite tiny, and viewers were invited to look through a lens suspended against the glass.  Placing one eye close to the cabinet glass I spied a pair of fleas dressed with Mexican hats, coats and something like water bags on their backs.  That’s what the label told me, or I wouldn’t have quite seen it.

The exhibit was so unusual and amusing that all the knotted dread of creatures I might encounter in Africa vanished.  I decided not to think about spiders and scorpions any more. The Safari – which culminated in a few days on the most relaxed and chilled Island of Lamu off the Kenyan coast in the Indian Ocean – was back on.

There are flea circuses.

Did you know that?  Over the last couple of hundred years there are entertainers who have run end-of-the-pier type attractions and fairground side shows employing the help of performing fleas.  I say performing but in reality, they are reacting.

The human flea is the only variety that can hack the circus life; by “human” I don’t mean to confer on them any high evolutionary status, but merely that they like human blood.   Size for size, they are powerful beasts.  They can jump several hundred times an hour to 10 inches in the air. When they start the jump they are pulling over 100g’s of force.

The star of the show!

Astronauts on Apollo missions only experienced 7.9g’s of force on their bodies. It would be like us jumping over Big Ben in less than two seconds from standing still.

If you are dexterous enough to put a fine wire harness around their necks, then you can mount them on all sorts of contraptions.  For example you can affix them to a very small carriage and their powerful legs will enable them to pull the vehicle forward as they try to escape.  Put four of them in line and we’re off to the races.  Secure two of them upright facing each other and by introducing a cotton wool ball you can get them to play soccer, their powerful flailing legs will propel the ball between them.  Glue fine wires on the ends of their legs and you can get them to sword fight.  They can walk the high wire and dance a waltz.

For all the flea’s miniature strength and prowess, there is little talent or showmanship; all the pizzazz coming from the circus owner who would beguile an audience with the wonders of the flea world.

The flea circuses have largely died out, partly because with the modern sanitisation of our lives, there are far less fleas around, but also because people’s tastes in entertainment have changed.

Knowing about the Tring dressed Fleas are just one those bits of information one has rattling about my mind’s cupboard that hardly ever prove to be useful, save for the hope that one day it might come up in a Pub quiz.

Twenty years later and I find myself driving through Northwood, a very leafy suburb to the North of London, looking for a tucked away house I had often visited; but this time I couldn’t find it.  I pulled into the forecourt of a car showroom.   I pushed open the glass door and walked through the showroom looking for someone to get directions.  My shoes squeaked loudly on the polished floor as I walked past brand new BMWs and Mercedes cars.

Sitting at a desk in the back of the showroom was a salesman and across from him a most glamorous woman, slim with legs that went all the way up to your imagination, slender fingers with bright red nails, and elegant two-piece and some discreet jewellery. She listened intently as the salesman was trying to describe an object with his fingertips denoting something tiny.   He was emphasising just how small this something was. Suddenly in mid sentence he stopped speaking, they both looked up at me.

Without preamble and with his fingers still poised in mid air describing that tiny something he said “Have you heard about the Mexican water carrying fleas at the Tring Natural History Museum?”

“Oh yes” I told them, “The museum is a few miles up the road from here.  They were quite popular with tourists to Mexico in late Victorian times.   Old women would make these curios for a peso or two”

There was no stopping me now.  “They are known as Pulgas Vestidas” I continued “which is Spanish for “Dressed fleas”and have become collector’s items – but I doubt the Museum would ever sell theirs.  Did you also know that in the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood they have a small box containing a flea wedding party?”

I didn’t know what his game was, but to ask independent verification of the tale he was telling her from a chance random stranger who had just happened to walk into the showroom was an all or nothing gambit.  It paid off!

Slightly shaking his head in amazement, He couldn’t believe his luck, and she was obviously newly impressed by the salesman.

They couldn’t help me with directions, so, having served my purpose, I began my squeaky return journey across the car showroom and back out into the bright afternoon sun.

I often wonder if he managed to sell her a car that afternoon.

English Heritage and the Cuban Missile Crisis

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein.

It’s such a mournful sound; the Banshee wail that rolls across the valley from the Plymouth Naval dockyard a mile to my house every Monday morning at 11.30 sharp!

It’s never late.

You see – that’s when they test the warning system – if we hear it at any other time it means there has been some kind of accident on a nuclear submarine. We are meant to stay in our homes, close the windows, listen to the local radio station and wait for instructions from the local government.

I feel better already.

HMS Victorious in Plymouth Naval Base

At one time, these sirens were all over the towns and cities of this country, before they were removed in the 1990s. Built originally to warn of impending Nazi air raids, these machines lived on with the new role of announcing that in 4 minutes there would be a nuclear attack. They would to test them once a year; it would be announced on the BBC. A chilling sound would waft across this Green and pleasant land.

Should we hear those death knells then we were to follow the instructions laid out in a bizarre and ridiculous booklet called “Protect & Survive” issued to all households in the 1980’s. We were instructed to make shelters inside our living rooms using the doors removed from the hinges and then covered in sandbags. The windows were to be whitewashed to deflect the initial flash that “could” cause fires inside the house. Of course, the actual blast following on at the speed of sound would blow the windows in, and probably the house too. But hopefully, you and your family would be fine under your doors covered in sandbags.

You would then wait for instructions from the government who had slightly better facilities – deep underground in reinforced concrete bunkers that were dotted about the country equipped with generators, air filters, radios and telephones with huge reserves of food and water. Once the dust had settled, so to speak, they would co-ordinate the restoration of society and get everything up and running again. Why the government was not immediately laughed out of office is beyond me. People took the precautions seriously for a while. But nobody really believed it, then or now.

English Heritage, a quasi government body charged with protecting and preserving the Architectural Heritage of this country has just issued a new list of buildings and sites that need preserving. Their portfolio goes as far back as the Norman and Saxon Churches, mediaeval Castles through 1930’s cinemas, the new architecture of the post war 1950s and as up to date as 1980’s ghastly office blocks. Top of the latest list are the “Cold War” bunkers of the regional emergency Regional Seats of governments (RSGs) and the concrete hangers where the American and British Nuclear strike forces sat in readiness for 20 years to scramble at a moment’s notice off into the skies to destroy the USSR.

It is not popular with the British Public who see these   “eyesores” as not worth saving.       But to me, these ugly,  brutal

The Cruise Missle Bunkers left behind at Greenham Common.

functional grey concrete structures, these blots on the landscape, are our past and must be kept for future generations as a reminder of our folly.

This is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Cuban missile crisis – that single most dangerous moment in the history of mankind – when a handful of men held the fate of everyone in their hands. For 13 days Washington, Moscow and Havana carried out a macabre dance of death with the future of mankind. It is no exaggeration to say the whole world paused, waited and prayed. Everyone knew, after the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, – that were mere fireworks compared to what the world now possessed – the consequences of the crisis descending into war.

I loved my school days; yet of all those happy years I can only recall one lesson in any real detail. It was a period of “Current Affairs” and it was taken by the headmaster, never before or since, had he taken lessons. It was just before that day of reckoning in 1962 when the Russian ships and their deadly cargo of nuclear rockets en route to Cuba were required to turn back or the shooting would begin.    He pulled no punches, taking us through every detail of the situation

The Blockade of Russian ships bound for Cuba.

and the various ways it could play out.  I doubt many of us fully understood the politics, or still less any notion of the true facts of the situation; but we well knew that we were in huge trouble.

In the blink of the other man’s eye, we emerged unscathed, although we were not out of the woods – indeed we were being walked deeper into the cold war forest. It seemed as though they were preparing for the nuclear slaughter, as though really welcoming it. These men had become so powerful and intoxicated with their weapons of mass destruction – it looked as though there was no hope.

Little wonder then that a generation growing up with the threat of nuclear extinction could not be expected to think or behave as if it had a future ahead of it. One of the key factors in the cultural revolution of the 60’s and 70’s was not an implosion of moral values; but an underlying feeling that everything was threatened by nuclear annihilation.

So why wait?   Let’s make love now- let’s make music, let’s take drugs – what? Are they going to kill you or something? America was bombing Vietnam back beyond the Stone Age whilst also facing-off with the Russians in Europe. Across the continent were thousands of battle tanks, troops and aircraft, the two superpowers poised nose tip to nose tip just waiting for a chance to throw a punch. Yer? Yer?…. So what ‘you gonna do eh? ……Come on then, I dare you...and so on.

They edged a little close to each other. American Cruise Missiles carrying nuclear warheads were deployed in Britain. Our country had become for America the unsinkable aircraft carrier in Europe. This was a serious escalation of the cold war. Suddenly, the weapons were there for everyone to see. There was enough nuclear fire power there to kill a hundred million people in a matter of seconds.  These missiles were on mobile launchers and each day they would leave the Bases and travel around the countryside.  As though they were going to work in the morning.

The 20th century was born cowering in the trenches, and never managed to climb out of them.

To the credit of the British Peace Movement; 30 thousand angry women went to the base and camped there to bring attention to the issue and demanded that these hideous things be removed. There was one organised protest when 70 thousand women joined hands; circling the base and then stretching across the country side to the perimeter of the

50,000 Women of the Grenham Common Peace camp encircle the base, home to the 501st Tacticle missile Wing USAF, armed with multiple warhead cruise Missiles.

Aldermaston weapons factory – home of the British Bomb. In 1991, as part of a treaty on intermediate range weapons, the cruise missiles were removed back to America. Left behind; those grey brutal concrete bunkers in which the missiles were housed that English Heritage now wants to preserve.

The last Greenham Common protester left the Peace camp 19 years after her first day at the fence.

Now that the world’s economy has collapsed and Britain is under the yoke of austerity cut backs on welfare, social services, the police, the army, our libraries, and our fire brigades; the Government want to renew the Submarine based nuclear weapons system; Trident.        If you are going to kill millions of people you want state-of-the-art equipment to do it with. A snitch at 84 billion pounds over the next 50 years.

Eighty four  Billion Pounds!  That is a stagering amount of money to spend on weapons that no one can ever sanely use.   If pounds were seconds; 1 million seconds are 11 days.  I billion Seconds is 32 years.  And these idiots want spend 84 times that, which incidently is 2,688 years worth, whilst through the coming winter and subsequent winters old age pensioners in 21st century Britain will die of hyperthermia because they cannot afford the energy to keep warm.

The women of Greenham Common wouldn’t allow any men to protest with them. Who can blame them when on TV we see the same arogant dull government men in their identical suites and ties espousing the same justification for having weapons of mass distruction for the last 50 years.

It is true that the one thing we learn from History is that we learn nothing from history.

As a small child, I once overheard the grown-ups discussing nuclear weapons. “You know, they fly round all day and night, with those nuclear bombs on board. It only takes someone to push the wrong button and we’ll all be killed”   I took it all in.

That night laying in bed, listening to the slow drone of turbo prop airliners as they began their approach to London Airport, I thought  they were all carrying atomic bombs and that at any minute they would make that terrible mistake. I was completely traumatised. Eventually, sleep rescued me.

A small thing really, but every Monday morning at 11.30 Sharp, the wailing Banshee from the dockyard takes me straight back under the blankets of my childhood.

As We Set Sail

The NBC news tweet alerted the world to the death of an historical icon. “Astronaut Neil Young, the first man to walk on the moon has died”.     The gaff was re-tweeted around the world at the speed of light.    Within minutes an embarrassed NBC news editor changed the headline to “Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon ,has died”.

Over millions of years the moon pulled and pushed the tides of the oceans from which, eventually, life forms climbed ashore and in a cosmic heart beat, stood up and achieved consciousness.     In the blink of an eye, a human flew up to the Moon and trod its virgin dust.

The early years of the 1960s were over shadowed by the ubiquitous threat of nuclear annihilation. We sat through those days of the Cuban missile crisis quaking in our boots.   The crisis came and went. Phew!

JFK announces to the world “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”       This was more like it!

At the time that Kennedy made this speech, Man had spent only 20 minutes in space; first the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and then American John Glenn, but the space race was on.      Kennedy committed the country to the most expensive project in the history of the world.      He promised that it would lead to huge advances in materials, computing, avionics, telecommunications and other technologies.   He certainly made good on that promise.  Kenedy concluded his great speech:  “Therefore as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing, on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked”

Then they assassinated him.

As a teenager I watched the first Moon landing. It was a moment of such positive potential – a time when the new generation was full of hope and energy. Everyone knows where they were at that moment.     We were all there with him as Armstrong took that one small step; this was where we were going.     This was where our future was, out there – amongst the stars, with the cosmic wind blowing on our cheeks; all my comics told me so.

Buzz Aldrin, 2nd man on the Moon, get his picture taken by Armstrong

A dozen men would walk on the moon before the Apollo programme came to an end. Neil Armstrong left behind on the Moon an American flag and a plaque with the inscription “For All Mankind” That couldn’t happen today.    The meek might inherit the Earth; but Halliburton will get the mineral rights.

Eventually the moment faded away into History.   With that fading and cut backs in NASA’s budget there  was a decline in American superiority. But others will follow.

And what of the man?

When Armstrong returned to Earth he was the most famous person in History.     He could have cashed in; he could have named his price, but he didn’t.    Early on he was warned by Charles Limburg – who only thirty years previously had been the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean – of the dangerous storm of public and commercial interest that was blowing his way.   In Limburg’s case it had resulted in the kidnapping and murder of his child son. Armstrong heeded the warning.

After leaving NASA, Neil Armstrong became a teacher at Cincinnati University and kept out of the limelight for the rest of his life. Whenever he found himself in the public eye he deflected all adoration; always reminding people that he was part of a much larger team; he just happened to be the one who “flew the bird”

Neil Armstrong

On his death we were able to pause a moment to remember this humble man and the massive thing he did. Long after our civilisation has crumbled; his first footprints will remain on the Sea of Tranquillity, undisturbed in the lunar dust, until the end of the Solar System.

In its fifty year history NASA has launched men into orbit (Mercury and Gemini), gone to the Moon, created the Space Shuttle programme, helped build and supply the Space Station, launched the Hubble Telescope; that incredible sharp eye on the Universe, placed hundreds of satellites into orbit and launched many interplanetary probes, like “Curiosity” the current Mars Lander mission. One of those programmes was pair of probes called Voyager 1&2.

Launched in 1977, these machines were sent out on a Grand Tour of the great Gas Giants of the Solar System. There was a rare favourable planetary alignment that allowed Voyager to fly out past Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, sending back an invaluable amount of data and some magnificent images of the planets and their moons. Using each of the Planet’s gravitational pull Voyager was propelled towards and then past each solar body onto the next, until passing close to Neptune the mission was to be flung onwards out of the Solar system and into deep space.

This week Voyager 2 has broken through the outer edge of Heliosphere – the bubble of charged particles created by the solar wind that denotes the edge of the Solar system and interstellar space.  We know that Voyager is now leaving our solar system because of the change in the signals being sent back from the craft.  The radio signature of cosmic rays of deep space is now greater than that of the Solar wind.  The radio, which has signal 10 times lower than cell phone will broadcast back home until about 2025 before the plutonium emits its last particle.

A fabulous view of the moon Io as it passes across the Planet Jupiter

Apart from the small nuclear reactor, the science packages and the radio equipment Voyager carries a Gold-plated audio-visual disc which is a kind of calling card should any extraterrestrial life forms encounter the craft at some point in the far distant future.

The Gold-plated audio Visual disc

Etched on the surface of the disc is a diagram explaining how to retrieve the recording. There is even a stylus and an electrical pickup on board with which to play the record. The disc contains images of life on Earth, it’s place in the solar system and audio recordings of greetings in 50 languages, the sounds made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, bird and whale song and a selection of music; including Mozart, Beethoven, Guan Pinghu, Stravinsky, Chuck Berry and some blues music.

In 1945 when the world was emerging from WW2 and entering the Atomic age; an Ohio rookie flyer, 15 year old Neil Armstrong – was awarded his pilots’ license – a year before he was allowed to drive. Rock legend Neil Young was born and a little known blues singer, Blind Willie Johnson was found dead in the burnt out ruins of his house, which he couldn’t afford to rebuild, covered in wet newspapers.

Blind Willie Johnson:
“Dark was the night, cold was the day”

Born in 1897 in Texas, Willie Johnson told his father when he was five years old that he wanted to be a preacher.   This was the year Charles Limburg was born.   He made a guitar from a cigar box and began his musical journey.   Willie’s mother had died when he was a baby and eventually his father re-married.     One day he witnessed a ferocious argument between his Step- Mother and Father which resulted in boiling water being thrown into his face.     He lost his sight for ever.       He spent his life preaching the Gospel and singing the Blues in towns across the Southern states.

The blues music included on Voyager’s Golden disc was a track by Blind Willie Johnson called “Dark was the night, cold was the day”      Blind, alone and penniless when he died; this man’s music has just left the solar system entering interstellar space, and at the time of writing, is 10 billion kilometres out and counting.

Along with Beethoven and Mozart , Blind Willie’s song is 35 years into an infinite journey to the stars.

An Orphan of Manchuria

When the sensei declared the school day over, the children ran out into the hot August afternoon. Nine year old Masao Nakajima did what he always did. He ran across the small town to the edge of the airbase, where his father was the commander. Masao loved aeroplanes; he loved his father, the two inextricable in his affections.

He would stand at the gate looking in awe at the fighter planes lined up at the runway’s edge, hoping he would see them scramble into the afternoon sky.      But not today.    Today the airfield was deserted, there was not a truck or a plane or a person to be seen

He didn’t understand what was going on. Masao ran to his house near the airfield.

He got ready to have the evening meal with his family. Again, something else he didn’t understand was going on. His father was in full ceremonial Japanese military uniform, his mother, reserved and beautiful was wearing her best kimono. Not a word was said during the meal. Masao thought he could see his mother holding back tears. His father was stiff and formal. Something had changed. He and his little sister dare not look at each other. After eating, they were sent to bed.

In his bed, Masao heard his father leave the house.

He went to sleep that night, the privileged son of an officer in the Japanese Imperial Air Force, who commanded an airbase near Harbin, the only home that Masao knew, and awoke to a world in chaos.

The sounds of shouting and commotion, made him leap from the bed to the window where he saw people running around in a kind of controlled frenzy. Cars loaded with boxes and bags and too many people, honked and weaved through the crowds. His mother came into the room and made him dress quickly. She told him that there was no time for explanations, but that they had to leave, and they had to leave now!

In the kitchen, his mother had tied a stack of lacquer wood food boxes in a scarf.  She grabbed them, then slung a bag over her back, took her children in hand and led them out into the street where, what seemed to him, the entire population of the world was on the move.

What Masao didn’t understand, couldn’t be expected to understand; was why his whole world was suddenly coming apart.   It was August 1945 and the liberating Soviet Army was swarming down from the roof of the world into the vast Chinese province of Manchuria to eject the Japanese who had occupied it since 1931. Within a week, the Soviets had killed, captured or dispersed over 3 million Japanese military & civilians.

Japanese Troops Surrender to the Soviet Army

They were to catch a train south to the port of Dalian where they might be able to get a ship across the Yellow Sea back to Japan. At the station there was barely concealed panic, but somehow, amid the struggling hoard they managed to get on a train.

During the sluggish journey, the train was ambushed by Russian troops. Amid gun fire and screaming, Masao’s mother made him climb through a window of the train. The last words she said to him were “run and “hide”

He hid in some bushes close to the railway line. He stayed put until the carnage was over and all was quiet. He walked through the burning train, stepping amongst the dead and crying. Many of the passengers had fled and not finding his mother, Masao assumed she and his sister must have escaped. Setting off down the railway line in the direction of travel, he continued his journey on foot.

How long Masao walked will never be known. Within a couple of days of a privileged child’s life he had become a refugee, reduced to drinking puddle water. Along the way he met a few people, they too just walking somewhere, some were Japanese and others, Chinese. They all looked forlorn and terrified. Occasionally people gave him a few scraps of food.

He met a railway worker who took him by the hand telling Masao that he would help him find his mother. But the man locked him in a shed by the railway line. He heard the railway worker telling someone outside the shed that he could sell the boy. Masao managed to break a hole in the back wall and escaped.

He slept under bushes. He did see some Russian soldiers here and there, but they paid him no mind. Just another Chinese kid.

And so it happened. Masao had mysteriously slipped from one nationality to another.

He jumped on a slow moving goods train hoping it would take him to Dalian but instead it veered west through a switch in the line, and Masao found himself near to Mongolia. Walking into a field he saw a farmer sitting eating his lunch. Seeing the boy, the farmer beckoned him over. Masao told him, in his best Chinese, of how he came to be there. The farmer gave him some food. Looking fondly on the boy, he invited him to live with him for a while. By now, Masao exhausted and depressed, was happy to be taken in and looked after. The offer of hospitality came with a stern warning: “you must never, ever reveal that you are a Japanese boy – there are people who will hurt you – and me also”

Although bemused, Masao understood enough that he should heed the warning.

In the transience of war, the Chinese farmer, unmarried and childless, was able to pass the boy off as an orphaned nephew. He settled down to a new life helping out in the fields; the days and weeks rolled into months.

The boy was enrolled in the new local school, where he did very well, never losing his love of areoplanes.  If a plane passed over head, Masao couldn’t resist pausing and watch its passing.      Two, three years rolled by and hope of escaping to Japan to find his family had all but faded.

All around him there was bitter resentment of the years spent under Japanese rule; collaborators with the Japanese were exposed almost weekly. People were beaten up and sometimes worse; killed. Houses were taken from families who prospered from the occupation. He soon understood the warning his adoptive father gave him that first day.

With the coming of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution it became even more imperative that the boy hide who he was. The whole land was in turmoil once again.

Masao was lucky, after a short spell at Technical College he was conscripted into the Red Army. With his high grades in Maths and engineering, and his expressed interest in aircraft he was transferred to flying school.

Masao as young cadet in the Red Army

Russia was supplying the new MIG 15 jet fighter to China. Masao was chosen to be one of the privileged pilots who were sent to Russia to learn the ropes on the new plane which was to become the backbone of the Chinese Air force and would soon be used in the skies above Korea.

While in Russia he heard of his adoptive father’s death. He was now truly alone

He came back to China flying one of the new Mig15 jet fighter planes. It now fell to him to train the new pilots who would engage with American planes over North Korea, so he was spared combat.

When on the ground Masao’s mother and sister were never far from his thoughts; but above the clouds it was his father at his shoulder – with a gentle hand on the joy stick. He wasn’t alone for long – he met and fell in love with a girl at his airbase. After many happy months they planned to marry. But the joy however,  was short-lived.

Masao’s commanding officer summoned him to his office and told him that he could not marry that girl!

Why ever not?   asked Masao.    Because her father was a traitor and a collaborator with the Japanese!     The Chinese officer spat the words out as though bile had issued into his mouth. He told the young man his career would be finished. No one would be his friend, privileges would be lost.

Masao and his new found love.

There was an upside to the situation, his commander told him. He was  to be promoted to command a squadron of new recruits and was to be stationed at airbase far away, where he could continue his promising career and slowly forget about the girl. He had no choice but to accept. Within a week, he was standing at the entrance to a small air station in a modest town close to the city of Harbin, where those few years before, his real father had been the commander. He could tell no one.

He met another woman, married and had children; but not a day went by when he didn’t think of his mother and sister, when he wouldn’t wonder where his father had gone after he left the house the night of the strained evening meal, never to return. Every day the girl who had been denied to him was added to the litany of loss that Masao silently carried with him.

The years slipped by, the Cultural Revolution gave way to the new Chinese Capitalism and there came a thawing of Sino-Japanese relations. One of the many bits of unfinished business between the two countries was the Orphans left behind in 1945. If anyone could demonstrate that they were between 1 and 16 years old and were left behind by their Japanese families then they could go home at government expense.

Hundreds of people, now in their later years, came out of the shadows, and enrolled in the “Relocation” programme, Masao was amongst them. He invited his wife to go with him to Japan, but she was not interested much in Masao and even less in his quest to find his family. So, with little regret, he left her behind and arrived in Tokyo with a group of other lost children.

And so it happened again; he slipped back from one nationality to another.

Returning lost children are greeted by volunteer helpers and the press in Tokyo

Housed in dormitories, that were built for the athletes of the 1966 Tokyo Olympics, these Orphans of Manchuria waited, longing to be recognised in the national hullabaloo that was created by the Japanese press. They were taken to the nearby NHK Television studios to be presented to the nation on live TV.    They sat in front of the cameras like a row of lost umbrellas at a railway station. Each person told their story, holding up a small sliver of a kimono dress, an ornate hair clip, a toy or a photograph; items kept secretly locked away for nearly half a century, that one day may be the key to their past.

Masao holds up a picture of his former self on Television

In the first of ten years of the “Orphans Relocation” scheme over sixty percent of the Orphans were reunited with their families. Each year there was a new group, but the success rate began to fall sharply. The Japanese on the crest of the economic wave soon got bored with the phenomenon. In the penultimate year of the scheme when the calls had fallen off to a trickle and only three percent were being claimed, Masao held up a small black and white photograph of himself as a school boy and told his story to the television audience. A few calls came in after the broadcast, but none of them were for him.

A few lucky ones were reunited with their families and the others, like Masao, slipped into a kind of no-man’s land of obscurity in Japan, living on a stipend from the Japanese government. Some of the unclaimed Orphans went back to China, but most stayed. Speaking only Chinese they remain forever lost – strangers in a strange land.

In the relentless stampede of historical events; the screams of chaos, gun fire and explosions; possessions spilt from a hand cart, a child’s hand let slip never make it into the chronicles of the times.

The last I heard of Masao was that he was living alone in a high rise apartment in a Tokyo suburb writing his life story.   Sadly, it will remain a flawed narrative without discovering the fate of his mother and sister he last saw on that train, and his father who was ordered away to another battle front just before the Japanese military were forced to “endure the unendurable” and lay down their arms.