CHAPTER Four Sharing My Extraordinary Life

My time in the RAF was not always as a prisoner. As a trained nurse I worked in the sick quarters within RAF Geilenkirchen, as there were hardly any serious illness, I spent a lot of time reading textbooks trying to understand what I had experienced previously. It became clear to me that I was different to most other airmen - for a start I didn’t drink alcohol and I was a loner, except for another guy who like me never got involved into group rages.

This was obvious because each Friday most of the other guys would become pissed out of their minds, and as a doctor told me. “I am not going to sew up any of these guys faces as they cut them selves up each Friday.” Of course, had to deal with their self injuries as they fought and cut each other faces. My friend who was different, I remember he loved classical music and shared the passion with his father.

He and I went on bike tour to the north German coast during a break we had.

But something that had a marked effect on my life was that I had a serious eye injury that put me in hospital for over six weeks. I was stationed on a bombing range where aircraft would fly over and fire rockets at an old German tank parked in the middle of a huge moor. I remember seeing guys tryuing to cut bits? iff the tank to sell the metal and when the planes arrives the guys would run like hell. But something I never realised at the time was that another airman and I were using a large potato as a ball and throwing it to each other. On this camp we had no balls to use in our leisure time, so the potato. What struck me later that the guy threw the potato with such force it smashed into my eye and knocked me out. And I now asked myself why he wanted to hurt me?

During my time in hospital I had my eyes covered so that I couldn’t use my eyes and I had to lie still. The strange thing was I quite liked it for I remember nurses trying to give me radios to listen to. But I didn’t have any need to take my mind off away somewhere, for I had fantastic enjoyment watching my own images and mental adventures. Eventually they flew me back to England to recover fully. Although I couldn’t see well with my left eye, I had fantastic peripheral vision and so it was almost like I had full wide vision. And something that I realised was that I developed another way of relating during it. For example, I felt that many people did things automatically in caring for me, but one nurse who I couldn’t see was wonderful caring. I wanted to see what this girl looked like so much that one day, I pulled the bandages away from my right eye so I could see her. She was very shy and ordinary looking girl and seemed embarrassed when she realised I could see her, and that was my lesson, don’t judge a book by its cover. But I couldn’t get to know her because I was flown back to the UK to have a good examination, and I spent ages posted to a RAF camp in Eastbourne.

A Hilltop Experience

But Germany wasn’t finished with me. For being a loner who didn’t enjoy group activities I often walked the huge airport in the evenings. The airport itself was an extraordinary sight because a row of massive aircraft was often parked in an enormous line, shining in the dim lighting. I never found out why these enormous creatures took off and flew away regularly, it was I believe a huge air peace keeping survey of Europe.

But one such evening, full of my own misery, I walked alone along the deserted airport. I felt what was the point of living if year after year were to be filled with this pain and meaninglessness? Better end it than live such a life. But why should we exist for such darkness, why should we have been brought into being anyway? Thinking thus I climbed a small hillock and looked across bleak winter fields. Apart from a few black specks of birds against the evening sky no other sign of life could be seen. Outwardly the view was to me as lifeless, cold and lonely as my inner world.

Then, during this blackness of soul, there came to my lips as if of themselves, strange words. Strange because I was not given to repeating them.

Our Father, which art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

In earth as it is ….

But I never finished them, for suddenly a love burst upon me which seemed to bathe me through and through, and I wept to be so embraced by it. Then the Love spoke, yet there was no voice, and it showed me things, yet there were no pictures. And what I saw was my life stretching away ahead of me, year after year, as full of the difficulties and restrictions and emptiness as I had been running away from. Then the voice said ‘None of this shall be taken away, for I give you this life and its events out of love. It is given that through it you come slowly to develop as a person. For through difficulties, you learn strength and discover your own wonder, and through life as a whole you will slowly find this Love I have waiting for you. Then, when you are one with the Love, you can take part with Me in Creation.’

I had never experienced anything like this before. I was not asleep, had taken no drug and yet it seemed a Wonder had brought it about. It was a wonder that left an indelible mark in my life and seemed to shift my feeling away from my misery to a view if life that had meaning. It also left me with the realisation that we reap what we have sown.