Chapter 5: A New Assignment - England

I did get home for Christmas of 1970, but I came home to a new car. Our 1969 VW bug had been hit broadside and Kathy got a new 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger in purple and black, not exactly what I would have picked, but then I wasn't there to help pick it out.

After spending Christmas at home with Kathy's family, we drove to New York to be with my family and had Christmas again, and I saw my grandfather (my mother's father) for the last time. He died two years later. So now we waited for new orders with a flight number and date for going to RAF Mildenhall from Fort Dix in New Jersey. We finally got our tickets for the last part of January, and we drove to the port of Philadelphia to drop off our car for shipment to England by container ship.

A funny thing occurred regarding that flight over to RAF Mildenhall. Our son John had received a stuffed monkey for Christmas from, I think my uncle James, who I was named after. He was my mother's brother. Anyway about the monkey, John had a jacket on because it was very cold in January in New Jersey, so we had to take one of his other jackets and put on the monkey, so he wouldn't be cold. John was not quite three then and to keep him quiet and satisfied we did and got quite a few looks with him hugging that monkey all through that flight.

Once we arrived at RAF Mildenhall and were processed in, we were divided up and bused to our new bases, and we were taken to the NCO club and once more processed in and then taken to a motel outside the gate. Housing wasn't available to many of us of lower ranks, and so we lived in the motel and rode to work with someone who had a car. From the motel to work was about two miles, and I probably could have walked but the weather was bitter cold and rainy.

We stayed in that motel for almost two months until our car finally came into Southampton. I caught a train to there with several other guys, and we picked up our cars and drove back to RAF Alconbury. We convoyed up there with about ten cars. One guy couldn't drive back as his car broke loose from the chains in the container, and it was smashed up along with the other car in the container. He rode with someone else. He had to wait for all the paperwork and insurance companies to work out what he could get for the car. The big thing besides body work was that his radiator was smashed back into the engine and they were afraid that the engine was damaged too.

So Kathy and I finally were offered base housing in Peterborough twenty-five miles from the base. The whole street was a loop and the houses on the outside of the loop were leased from the local council for Americans stationed at RAF Alconbury but the inside of the loop was all British people. It was funny, but some of my best friends became the people across the street from our house there. Each house was a duplex, and we loved our house and the friends we made there.

I guess we had been there about a month when we found we had a ghost living with us in the furnace room. We talked to the neighbors and found out that one of the bricklayers was on the ground when his apprentice was carrying a hod of bricks up the ladder to where the walls were when he misstepped and the whole load of bricks came down and hit the mason on the head and killed him instantly. Anyway, he was the ghost of our side of the house. He didn't bother the other side as far as we knew. I talked to our neighbors, both sets, and they never knew of his visit to them.

I found out about this as I was going upstairs to see my son after coming home from work. He was on the floor and playing with some cars. He would push the car to the other side of the room, and the car would next lift up and turn around and then be pushed to John. I stood there and stared at the scene unfolding in front of me. Suddenly, John saw me and said, "Daddy, Shamus, and I are playing cars. He lives in the furnace room, but he likes to play with me."

"That's nice John. As long as you two play nice you can play with Shamus." I backed down the stairs and told Kathy what I had just seen, and she said, "Oh you met Shamus then."

It was like she already knew, but didn't tell me about it. "When did you find out about Shamus?"

I guess it was yesterday when I was coming upstairs, and I was stopped by something cold as ice and thick as molasses. Once I passed through, John said I just walked through Shamus the ghost. Now I don't know about you, but I believe John that I walked through a ghost."

"Yes I do believe we have a ghost living in the furnace room. There is no way that John could have moved that car the way I saw upstairs without telekinesis, and I don't think our son can do that."

"Nope, so we have four of us living here. He doesn't eat anything, so we are good."

That was the end of our discussion of the ghost in our house. I found out about the accident a couple of weeks later from my neighbor Phil from across the street. Phil and I came to be very close. He had an Austin Mini, and I loved that thing, so when we decided that our Dodge Dart Swinger was too big for the roads over there; I sold it to a guy going back to the states and bought me a little 1965 Morris Mini Cooper. I loved that car, and it could really move out. For only 998 cc's and twin downdraft carbs, it could hit one hundred in nothing flat and take corners like it was on a tether. We both loved that car. I think we drove that car for the better part of three years. We drove all around Peterborough looking at the sights, going to castles, churches and exploring almost every weekend. We even went to Nottingham Castle and saw Sherwood Forest, or what was left of it in 73. It was cute. This was just after the Disney film Robin Hood came out and there is a statue of Robin Hood there, and some young kid was crying because his mother insisted that the statue was of Robin, but the kid said, "But he's not a fox! He's not Robin Hood." Kathy and I laughed about that.