SOAMES AND THE GHOST
Of course, Aircraftman Second Class Soames Forsyth didn’t really believe in ghosts. There was a time though, when his disbelief was badly strained, and that time was was horrifyingly, nerve shatteringly now.
’Why me?’ he complained bitterly to himself. ’What did I do to deserve this? I never asked to come here. I didn’t even want to join the Royal Air Force in the first place.’
Well might Soames ask such questions. After all the excitement of being posted overseas had subsided to a more normal level, he found that the military mind had been subject to a severe aberration when choosing the place where he now served, somewhere in the back of beyond, if not a good deal further. There was a theory amongst airmen of the rank of corporal or below that officialdom searched the world until places were found where no-one could possibly live, and built airfields there. This was obviously one such spot. Soames scarcely knew just where it was, except that it was one of the desert areas of the world, hot, sticky and grossly uncomfortable. It was a two year tour of duty, long enough to get to know it quite well, rather better than he had any wish to do so. It was a place with problems of its own, not the least being the fact that the local inhabitants didn’t really want a British military presence there, and were not slow to let their attitude be known. In fact, only a few weeks previously, the bullets had been flying in all directions, and while things were relatively peaceful at the moment, there was always a feeling of severe tension.
During his normal working time Soames was a motor mechanic, mainly stripping down fire engines to the basic framework, then waiting months for spare parts, but that was not all that he did. Every two or three weeks he was given a rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, or as common parlance had it, a pea shooter and fifty peas, and sent to the airfield to stand guard over the