I looked again at “Hitler”; he sat immobile in his chair, his shorn uniform awry, while tears ran slowly down his cheeks. Then and there I was filled with a transcendent pity too deep and poignant for any words – pity for that life spent in senseless and futile war against its own kind and against the time to which it belonged. Shorn of his flimsy honours, power had gone out from him completely, leaving him a foolish, lonely human creature, to the slow, perhaps eternal, realization of the crimes he had committed against humanity, against the life and peace of the world.
For me, that vision was the key to the assurance that I needed. Through it, I knew within myself, deeper than all desire or hope or reasoning, that Germany would never win the war. Through all the ups and downs of success and disaster that filled the years that followed, I suffered with my kind for the base and heartless cruelties of the war, but never for a moment did I fail to know that in the end, and whatever the cost, the United Nations would be victorious. At times, my family and friends lost patience with me when I tried to ease their anger and their agony over Coventry or Lidice by reminding them of the end. I would mourn over the disasters and loss of life, but within myself I knew with a constant and steady assurance that Germany was destined to defeat.
There is one phase in this experience which I have never been able to translate into understandable terms for my own satisfaction. I do not yet know the meaning of the statement: “No, not Russian. That’s an Afghan knife.” As the war ended in Europe, with Russia’s occupation of Berlin, one could easily find a connection between my impression of “the Russian sickle” and the final downfall of Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship – but one will be wise not to make one’s own acceptances and rejections among the symbols of such an experience, and it may be that the fate of Germany is bound up with the fate of Asia in some future too far ahead for our minds to penetrate.
AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HUGH DOWDING was an unlikely man to have had an abiding fascination with the paranormal, becoming one of the great advocates of spiritualism in his later life. Born in Scotland, he served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and in 1936 was appointed commander-in-chief of RAF Fighter Command, organizing the defence of Britain against the Nazis four years later and triumphing in the Battle of Britain. Amidst the trauma of war, he became a “regular communicator with the spirit world”, and in May and June 1943, relayed a series of messages he had received from “the other side” to an enthralled readership of the Sunday Pictorial. The series is said to have given great comfort to many parents who had lost sons in aerial combat.
ONE OF OUR BOYS
Location and date: The Ruhr, Germany, 1943
The next episode is the awakening of a Bomber crew, shot down over the Ruhr. The pilot is brought to us by James – James is one of my principal co-operators on the other side. He was commanding a Night Fighting Squadron during the Battle of Britain. He was then, and is now, a very dear friend of mine.
L.L. “Here is a young RAF boy quite unaware of us. Tall, very slim and dark, with big flying boots. James and others are all around him but he can’t see them either. Two Guides, one on each side, are directing streams of light on to him from their fingers.
“Now he is beginning to see us. He says he wants to sit down, he is rather tired. He sits down in an armchair. His leg is aching, he takes off one of his flying boots. He says that he ‘baled out’ and landed badly.” (James says No, he never left the machine, but he thinks he did.) He speaks:
“ ‘Sorry, I can’t just make it out. Where am I?’ I tell him that he has been brought to me because he can believe what I say. I show him a photograph to establish my identity. I tell him that we are in Wimbledon.
“ ‘Thank God Sir! The last I can remember was that we were over the Ruhr. How did they manage to bring me here?’ (He thinks it has been done by the underground organization and is much impressed by its efficiency.)
“I ask him when he left England, and he says Sunday. I tell him this is Thursday. I say that while he has been unconscious he has been brought across a number of frontiers, between Germany and Holland, and between Holland and England, and furthermore that he has crossed the greatest Frontier of all. I hope that this will make him realize what has happened; but not a bit of it, I must try again.
“He asks why he has been brought to me specially; and I say I suppose because I love the boys so much. I never see or hear a big formation going over without saying ‘God Bless you and bring you back safe.’
“He says ‘Well, we got back safe all right.’ And I say ‘Safe. Yes. Do you know Rupert Brooke’s poem called ‘Safety’? Let’s see if I can remember the last four lines,
“ ‘War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.’
“He said ‘By Jove Sir, that’s fine. But anyway I’m safe.’ So I said to him very gently, ‘Yes. Safest of all.’ That brought it home to him at last. He said ‘D’you mean to say you’re trying to tell me that I’m dead?’ Then he said ‘Why can’t you keep still? Why do you keep jumping about?’ I replied, ‘I have already told you that you will see us looking less and less real, and then you will see your friends who have come to meet you. Look round now and tell me if you can see anyone.’
“Then he said, ‘Hallo. There’s Clockie – but how can he be here. Clockie’s dead.’ I said, ‘He is no more and no less dead than you are.’ Then he called out ‘Harry!’ and added ‘Good Lord there’s even old Ginger! I must have stumbled into an RAF Camp. I see – I don’t mind being dead if this is it. It’s a mighty fine piece of work.’ Then (answering one of his friends) ‘Of course I’m coming. You just try to stop me.’ ”
James: “Thank you Sir. That was well done. He went out from one of the Stations in the South. He was one of our boys. Although you only spoke to one there were six others watching and listening-in. He was the most stable. That was why we chose him as spokesman. His quiet acceptance helped the others. They’re a fine lot of boys and we’re mighty glad to get them over here; but we think what a poor place Earth is going to be without them.”
JOHN HARRIES was a specialist travel writer who became intrigued by the supernatural after his wartime service in the RAF. His journeys around the British Isles gathering material brought him into contact with a number of contemporary hauntings which he investigated with a close attention to detail and proven facts. His collection, The Ghost Hunter’s Road Book (1974) is a particularly good example of his research – and one story of a personal encounter in 1945 with a terrifying animal ghost in a remote corner of East Anglia is probably as strange as anything to be found in this book.
THE SPECTRAL DOG
Location and date: Dereham, Norfolk, 1945
The practical explanation of the East Anglian Black Shucks, Fen Hounds, and monkeys would no doubt be that they are relics of folk memory from the times of the Viking invaders when these terrifying warriors brought with them both the religious accounts of their god Odin’s hounds and also used dogs to hunt animals and human enemies. But science makes little headway with folk who have themselves seen, or imagined, these nocturnal beasts.
A personal experience may be justified in their defence. After the end of the Second World War the writer was awaiting demobilization at the RAF station of Swanton Morley, near Norwich. As was usual for Air Force personnel stationed in remote areas, everyone was issued with a bicycle. The nearest “centre of civilization” was East Dereham, some five miles away on B1147. A network of minor lanes connecting farms made it possible to cut this distance a little – and they were useful when cycling by night without lamps, as was usually the case.
Shortly before midnight in November 1945, when there was a moon screened by light cloud, I set off from Dereham for the RAF station. A premonition made me glance back towards a sharp curve I had just passed. A dog like a black Alsatian or La
brador was loping along the middle of the road. I rode on, imagining that the animal would turn into a farm or cottage. A mile farther I again looked back along a stretch clear of hedges and trees so that the road was quite visible in the weak moonlight. The animal was still coming along.
Dogs have a habit of attaching themselves to troops, possibly because of plentiful food and companionship. Not wanting to tempt someone’s pet to follow me from its presumed home in East Dereham I turned the cycle and told the dog to go home. It stood motionless. I could see its jaws were open and its tongue lolling out – but there was no sound of panting. I frankly admit that, lover of dogs as I am, and confident that any indication of fear is the one certain way of turning a friendly animal into an attacker, I was unwilling to approach closer. I cycled on, turning frequently. The dog was always behind, loping easily along the centre of the road. I increased my speed, and on the flat roads of Norfolk on a windless night it is easy to reach twenty miles per hour. The dog kept precisely the same distance from me. I slowed down; so did the dog. I stopped and faced it once more. The animal merely stood motionless.
The approach road outside the RAF station had been widened and straightened to enable fuel tankers and articulated vehicles to use it. Consequently the half mile to the guard room was without concealment. I slowed down and glanced back yet again as I neared the chainlink fencing. The dog was still coming at its easy lope. Then, in a darker patch where a clump of trees bordered the road, it disappeared. I went back and looked. There was nothing to be seen either on the grass verge, below the trees, or in the bare fields beyond the fence – as far as I could see into the gloom. Subsequently, out of interest, I inquired at the farms and cottages on the road if they owned a black Alsatian-type dog or a Labrador. None did. One old woman in a cottage on the outskirts of East Dereham stared at me and then banged the door in my face. From her horrified glance I suspect that she believed, as many Norfolk folk would do today, that she was seeing someone who had the mark of death on him from seeing Black Shuck.
If anyone wishes for circumstantial evidence of this spectral animal’s existence – and powers to transform itself into solid flesh – he has only to go to Bungay. Curious scratches on the door of the parish church were reputedly made by Black Shuck when he tried to pursue a victim who had taken sanctuary in the church.
DENNIS BARDENS had what he liked to call a “haunted life” having seen his first ghost as a child living in Southsea, been “pestered” by another when he was a young reporter living in Highgate and then living for a time in a haunted flat in Kensington with his wife and young son. These and other supernatural experiences prompted Bardens into a career as an investigator and he subsequently edited and wrote hundreds of factual programmes for radio and television. Among his most significant books were Mysterious Worlds (1960) and Ghosts and Hauntings (1965) in which he related his encounters with varying spirits from poltergeists to nautical ghosts. This particular experience counts as one of the most bizarre and frightening of all.
MURDERED BY THE NAZIS
Location and date: Prague, 1945
I shall not easily forget my own encounter with a ghost in January, 1946. It was a ghost which I neither saw nor heard, but it remained a terrifying experience.
It was in Prague, and the war had been over only a month or so. The streets were scarred by battle, and the sidewalks decked with patriotic ribbons and a treasured photograph, in memory of some freedom fighter who had fallen there. There was a scarcity of everything; sugar and butter and meat were unheard-of luxuries.
I was sitting in my room at the Esplanade Hotel, working out what my day’s routine was to be. As special correspondent of the Sunday Dispatch and Illustrated – then a thriving illustrated weekly – and a “stringer” for a national daily newspaper, life was interesting enough. Czechoslovakia was gradually returning to normal, although no constitutionally elected government yet existed and the provisional government, with its mixture of Communists, Catholics, Social Democrats and exiles returned from London, had no real mandate from anybody. A quarter of a million Russian soldiers were in the country, and strategic places such as the uranium mines at Yachimov, Ruzin Airport at Prague, and the National Bank, were under Russian control.
The morning’s post, as I sipped my ersatz coffee, had little of interest. A few dreary, badly-stencilled handouts combining the jargon of the civil service with the clichés of propaganda – and one postcard, from a friend in Sevenoaks:
“ . . . don’t go to inordinate trouble in the matter, but as you happen to be in Prague, could you find out what’s happened to Mrs Lillian H? The last address I have is c/o Mrs X., number . . . Husinecka, Prague . . .”
It seemed little to ask, so I consulted my street map and found that Husinecka was quite near. Even so, the name of both Mrs H and Mrs X had a Jewish – and therefore an ominous – ring. In the holocaust and contagion of organised hate unleashed by the Nazis, only a pitiful remnant of Europe’s Jewish population remained. Men, women and children, irrespective of age or infirmity, had been subject to every imaginable and unimaginable cruelty and indignity before being granted protracted release of death.
The address proved to be a box-like block of flats starved of paint and void of character. There was no life, and the stairs were unlit and crowded with prams, garbage cans and empty bottles. I had to strike a match to find the number of the flat I sought, and only after incessant ringing was the door opened – by only a few inches. In the half-light I could see an elderly woman; I don’t know why, but her face seemed familiar to me. Yes, she said, she was a friend of Mrs H. But the joyless way in which she said this, and her general nervousness, terror almost, made me fear the worst. She asked me into a dingy sitting-room and broke out into such an uncontrolled volley of talk that I wondered if she were mad. On second thoughts I realised that her general demeanour was understandable when one considered the effects of cumulative nervous strain. After all, she was a German Jewess. Somehow, she had escaped the gas ovens, but she must have lived in fear through those long years, concealing her Jewishness, terrified lest it should leak out; and now, with feeling running so high against Germans, Nazi or non-Nazi, even Germans who had been settled in Czechoslovakia for more than 200 years, she was likely to be the victim of violence because of her origins.
I let the stream of talk spend itself, then in answer to my questions, the story of her friend, Mrs H emerged. She was a humble sewing-woman, sixty-two years old and a widow, living alone in a bedsitting room in Prague when the Germans invaded. She eked out a bare living by odd scraps of sewing and mending. A few family photographs, one or two threadbare dresses of poor quality, and some treasured books were her only possessions. But with the Germans came the reign of terror. Her passport was stamped with the letter “J” and she was not allowed to work, nor to draw rations. Every Jew knew that the process of attrition was only a half-way house to terror.
In despair, she decided to go underground, to pretend to disappear in such a way that it would be inferred by the authorities that she had committed suicide. Accordingly, she left her passport, identity papers and a few odds and ends, together with a suicide note in her room. She filled a humble fibre suitcase with a few garments and left it with her friend in Husinecka. Then, under an assumed name, she joined a convent on the outskirts of Prague. I felt pretty certain that the nuns must have known she was not a Catholic, but had shielded her for humanitarian reasons.
Mrs X, as she told me all this, also said that she made a practice of visiting Mrs H regularly at the convent. This was well meant, but was almost certainly a mistake. Nuns do not receive regular visitors, and the fact may well have been noticed. At any rate, Mrs H enjoyed immunity until 1944 when, for some reason, the convent was raided by the Gestapo. All the sisters were arrested and never heard of again. And Mrs H’s true identity was detected. Two pitiful postcards told the remainder of the story: one, from Terezin in Czechoslovakia asked for a dress and some spectacles; the other, from Oswiecim
in Poland, said simply “I am well.” This would be all she would have been allowed to say, and even this meagre concession by the Germans was unusual. But Mrs X knew what it meant; it meant “goodbye,” for Oswiecim was an extermination camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews went to the gas chambers, besides meeting death by hanging and ill-treatment. And Terezin had an evil enough reputation as it was a transit camp, where prisoners were sorted, by a mere glance, into two classes – those who were to live, and those condemned to slave labour.
While reading the postcard I had a curious feeling of being watched, and a “tingly” feeling in the spine. I gave it no more thought, however. Nor did I tell Mrs X that she might have, unwittingly, encompassed the death of her friend by her visits. She had had troubles enough. I thanked her for her help, and made arrangements to visit Terezin to see what evidence I could find of Mrs H having been there in transit to Oświecim.
The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings Page 20