Frederick
Forsyth - The Shepherd
For a brief
moment, while waiting for the control tower to clear me for takeoff, I glanced
out through the Perspex cockpit canopy at the surrounding German countryside.
It lay white and crisp beneath the crackling December moon.
Behind me
lay the boundary fence of the Royal Air Force base, and beyond the fence, as I
had seen while swinging my little fighter into line with the takeoff runway,
the sheet of snow covering the flat farmland stretched away to the line of the
pine trees, two miles distant in the night yet so clear I could almost see the
shapes of the trees themselves.
Ahead of
me, as I waited for the voice of the controller to come through the headphones,
was the runway itself, a slick black ribbon of tarmac, flanked by twin rows of
bright-burning lights, illuminating the solid path cut earlier by the
snowplows. Behind the lights were the humped banks of the morning’s snow,
frozen hard once again where the snowplow blades had pushed them. Far away to
my right, the airfield tower stood up like a single glowing candle amid the
brilliant hangars where the muffled aircraftmen were even now closing down the
station for the night.
Inside the
control tower, I knew, all was warmth and merriment, the staff waiting only for
my departure to close down also, jump into the waiting cars, and head back to
the parties in the mess. Within minutes of my going, the lights would die out,
leaving only the huddled hangars, seeming hunched against the bitter night, the
shrouded fighter planes, the sleeping fuel-bowser trucks, and, above them all,
the single flickering station light, brilliant red above the black-and-white
airfield, beating out in Morse code the name of the station— CELLE—to an
unheeding sky. For tonight there would be no wandering aviators to look down
and check their bearings; tonight was Christmas Eve, in the year of grace 1957,
and I was a young pilot trying to get home to Blighty for his Christmas leave.
I was in a
hurry and my watch read ten-fifteen by the dim blue glow of the control panel
where the rows of dials quivered and danced. It was warm and snug inside the
cockpit, the heating turned up full to prevent the Perspex’ icing up. It was
like a cocoon, small and warm and safe, shielding me from the bitter cold
outside, from the freezing night that can kill a man inside a minute if he is
exposed to it at six hundred miles an hour.
“Charlie
Delta...”
The
controller’s voice woke me from my reverie, sounding in my headphones as if he
were with me in the tiny cockpit, shouting in my ear. He’s had a jar or two
already, I thought. Strictly against orders, but what the hell? It’s Christmas
Eve.
“Charlie
Delta...Control,” I responded.
“Charlie
Delta, clear takeoff,” he said.
I saw no
point in responding. I simply eased the throttle forward slowly with the left
hand, holding the Vampire steady down the central line with the right hand.
Behind me the low whine of the Goblin engine rose and rose, passing through a
cry and into a scream. The snub-nosed fighter rolled, the lights each side of
the runway passed in ever quicker succession, till they were flashing in a
continuous blur. She became light, the nose rose fractionally, freeing the nosewheel
from contact with the runway, and the rumble vanished instantly. Seconds later
the main wheels came away and their soft drumming also stopped. I held her low
above the deck, letting the speed build up till a glance at the air-speed
indicator told me we were through 120 knots and heading for 150. As the end of
the runway whizzed beneath my feet I pulled the Vampire into a gently climbing
turn to the left, easing up the undercarriage lever as I did so.
From
beneath and behind me I heard the dull clunk of the wheels entering their bays
and felt the lunge forward of the jet as the drag of the undercarriage
vanished. In front of me the three red lights representing three wheels
extinguished themselves. I held her into the climbing turn, pressing the radio
button with the left thumb.
“Charlie
Delta, clear airfield, wheels up and locked,” I said into my oxygen mask.
“Charlie
Delta, roger, over to Channel D,” said the controller, and then, before I could
change radio channels, he added, “Happy Christmas.”
Strictly
against the rules of radio procedure, of course. I was very young then, and
very conscientious. But I replied, “Thank you, Tower, and same to you.” Then I
switched channels to tune into the RAF’s North Germany Air Control frequency.
Down on my
right thigh was strapped the map with my course charted on it in blue ink, but
I did not need it. I knew the details by heart, worked out earlier with the
navigation officer in the nav. hut. Turn overhead Celle airfield onto course
265 degrees, continue climbing to 27,000 feet. On reaching height, maintain
course and keep speed to 485 knots. Check in with Channel D to let them know
you’re in their airspace, then a straight run over the Dutch coast south of the
Bevelands into the North Sea. After forty-four minutes’ flying time, change to
Channel F and call Lakenheath Control to give you a “steer.” Fourteen minutes
later you’ll be overhead Lakenheath. After that, follow instructions and
they’ll bring you down on a radio-con- trolled descent. No problem, all routine
procedures. Sixty-six minutes’ flying time, with the descent and landing, and
the Vampire had enough fuel for over eighty minutes in the air.
Swinging
over Celle airfield at 5,000 feet, I straightened up and watched the needle on
my compass settle happily down on a course of 265 degrees. The nose was
pointing toward the black, freezing vault of the night sky, studded with stars
so brilliant they flickered their white fire against the eyeballs. Below, the
black-and-white map of north Germany was growing smaller, the dark masses of
the pine forests blending into the white expanses of the fields. Here and there
a village or small town glittered with lights. Down there amid the gaily lit
streets the carol singers would be out, knocking on the holly-studded doors to
sing “Silent Night’' and collect pfennigs for charity. The Westphalian housewives
would be preparing hams and geese.
Four
hundred miles ahead of me the story would be the same, the carols in my own
language but many of the tunes the same, and it would be turkey instead of
goose. But whether you call it Weihnacht or Christmas, it’s the same all over
the Christian world, and it was good to be going home.
From Lakenheath
I knew I could get a lift down to London in the liberty bus, leaving just after
midnight; from London I was confident I could hitch a lift to my parents’ home
in Kent. By breakfast time I’d be celebrating with my own family. The altimeter
read 27,000 feet. I eased the nose forward, reduced throttle setting to give me
an air speed of 485 knots and held her steady on 265 degrees. Somewhere beneath
me in the gloom the Dutch border would be slipping away, and I had been
airborne for twenty-one minutes. No problem.
The problem
started ten minutes out over the North Sea, and it started so quietly that it
was several minutes before I realized I had one at all.
For some
time I had been unaware that the low hum coming through my headphones into my
ears had ceased, to be replaced by the strange nothingness of total silence. I
must have been failing to concentrate, my thoughts being of home and my waiting
family. The first thing I knew was when I flicked a glance downward to check my
course on the compass. Instead of being rock-steady on 265 degrees, the needle
was drifting lazily round the clock, passing through east, west, south, and
north with total impartiality.
I swore a
most unseasonal sentiment against the compass and the instrument fitter who
should have
checked it
for 100-percent reliability. Compass failure at night, even a brilliant moonlit
night such as the one beyond the cockpit Perspex, was no fun. Still, it was not
too serious: there was a standby compass—the alcohol kind. But, when I glanced
at it, that one seemed to be in trouble, too. The needle was swinging wildly.
Apparently something had jarred the case—which isn’t uncommon. In any event, I
could call up Lakenheath in a few minutes and they would give me a GCA—Ground
Controlled Approach—the second-by-second instructions that a well-equipped
airfield can give a pilot to bring him home in the worst of weathers, following
his progress on ultraprecise radar screens, watching him descend all the way to
the tarmac, tracing his position in the sky yard by yard and second by second.
I glanced at my watch: thirty- four minutes airborne. I could try to raise
Lakenheath now, at the outside limit of my radio range.
Before
trying Lakenheath, the correct procedure would be to inform Channel D, to which
I was tuned, of my little problem, so they could advise Lakenheath that I was
on my way without a compass. I pressed the transmit button and called: “Celle,
Charlie Delta, Celle, Charlie Delta, calling North Beveland Control....”
I stopped.
There was no point in going on. Instead of the lively crackle of static and the
sharp sound of my own voice coming back into my own ears, there was a muffled
murmur inside my oxygen mask. My own voice speaking... and going nowhere. I
tried again. Same result. Far back across the wastes of the black and bitter
North Sea, in the warm, cheery concrete complex of North Beveland Control, men
sat back from their control panel, chatting and sipping their steaming coffee
and cocoa. And they could not hear me. The radio was dead.
Fighting
down the rising sense of panic that can kill a pilot faster than anything else,
I swallowed and slowly counted to ten. Then I switched to
Channel F
and tried to raise Lakenheath, ahead of me amid the Suffolk countryside, lying
in its forest of pine trees south of Thetford, beautifully equipped with its
GCA system for bringing home lost aircraft. On Channel F the radio was as dead
as ever. My own muttering into the oxygen mask was smothered by the surrounding
rubber. The steady whistle of my own jet engine behind me was my only answer.
It’s a very
lonely place, the sky, and even more so the sky on a winter’s night. And a
single-seater jet fighter is a lonely home, a tiny steel box held aloft on
stubby wings, hurled through the freezing
emptiness
by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousand horses every
second. But the loneliness is offset, cancelled out, by the knowledge that at
the touch of a button on the throttle, the pilot can talk to other human
beings, people who care about him, men and women who staff a network of
stations around the world; just one touch of that button, the transmit button,
and scores of them in control towers across the land that are tuned to his
channel can hear him call for help. When the pilot transmits, on every one of
those screens a line of light streaks from the center of the screen to the
outside rim, which is marked with figures, from one to three hundred and sixty.
Where the streak of light hits the ring, that is where the aircraft lies in
relation to the control tower listening to him. The control towers are linked,
so with two cross bearings they can locate his position to within a few hundred
yards. He is not lost any more. People begin working to bring him down.
The radar
operators pick up the little dot he makes on their screens from all the other
dots; they call him up and give him instructions. “Begin your descent now,
Charlie Delta. We have you now...”
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