Flying high

Way back in the past, when Africa was a colourful patchwork of peaceful colonies, I travelled extensively between Northern Rhodesia and Kenya. Motor transport was the “in thing” in those days, and despite the appalling road conditions, the lack of filling stations, the rainy season, and the numerous breakdowns that I endured, it was an experience that I will always cherish as being one of the highlights of my youth.

My story begins at a place called Kapiri Mposhi and I dare say that a lot of old folks will still remember it as being known as the crossroads of Africa. You see, the road split at Kapiri, to the south was Salisbury, Bulawayo and Johannesburg. The west led towards the Copperbelt mines, Kitwe and Ndola, and the Belgian Congo. To the north, the Great North Road wound its way via Kasama and Abercorn, Mbeya and onwards to Nairobi. It was no wonder then, that the Kapiri Mposhi Hotel was probably the most popular watering hole in Central Africa.

The hotel proprietor was a chap called Jack, Jack Forsythe, an ex-RAF man, and I don`t think that there could have been a better host in the whole wide world.
Licensing laws were virtually unknown in those days, and so it was that we used to sit and relish our drinks after dinner, recalling old friends both past and present from the far corners of the earth. I know from my own experience that I never sat at that bar, without someone having heard of me, and my family to the north, and I having heard of them.
On this particular evening, I`d had a shower and a change of shirt, and was sitting at the bar when I met an old friend who was down from Solwezi, Northern Rhodesia.

He was an assistant district commissioner by the name of Chris, I forget his other name, anyway we soon got chatting about the friends we knew and the adventures that we`d shared.

Solwezi in those days was purely a male-dominated government-operated town, set in the middle of the African bush. Although they had an adequate rest house, they badly needed a club where they could wash down the dust with copious volumes of ale. Chris was laughing over the fact that I had been there to “wet the roof” of the new club, long before the sides had been bricked in. We had all stood at the bar with our beers, with the walls only waist high, when the rain had suddenly bucketed down, yet not a soul was prepared to find shelter!

The bar in the hotel was filling up when the telephone began to ring. Charlie, our barman lifted the receiver and listened, and from the look on his face, I knew that something was wrong. “It’s Jack,” he said as he hung up the phone.
“He left Ndola over an hour ago, and should be here by now!”

Here, let me explain that Jack had a private aircraft, a Cessna 172, and as the roads were just about impassable during the rainy season, Jack would fly in provisions and liquor almost every week, today was no exception.

Why he had left it so late I don`t know, but what was more worrying was the fact that it was almost dark outside, and cloudy to boot, Jack would never find the tiny grass landing strip on a night like this, even if he was sober, which was a very rare occurrence!

We all dashed outside, and to our horror, it was teeming down with rain, and I knew that I wasnt the only one who had grave doubts as to whether we`d ever see Jack again.
Then we heard an aircraft, flying quite low above us, simultaneously our hopes were raised, and then lowered as it flew on through the rain. We all knew it had to be Jack`s Cessna, yet it had flown on through the rain, its engine purring sweetly until it was well out of range.

Suddenly it hit us like a ton of bricks, how could Jack possibly know where the airstrip was, it had no landing lights, and the cloud cover was down to 100 feet or so.
Without even thinking we automatically jumped into our cars and bakkies, and headed for the airstrip some four kilometres up the road. Quite a few of the private sedans got hopelessly stuck in the mud, but we left those where they were, and headed for the end of the runway, our headlights on, waiting for Jack to come round for his final approach. Well, he didn`t come round, we switched off our lights, and waited. I`m not sure how many hours Jack had logged in the RAF, quite a few I imagined, and we all knew him to be an excellent flyer, a little reckless perhaps, since this was his third aircraft.

At a rough estimate, he had been airborne for two and a half hours, and we all knew that he wouldnt have much aviation fuel left in his tanks, because he`d fly quite light, chances were, he`d come down in the bush and we`d never find him.

The mere fact that Jack didn`t even attempt to land set me thinking, it wasn’t like him, then the truth dawned, and hit me like a bombshell, Jack must have fallen asleep!
There wasn`t time to explain, I headed for my car, and drove to the nearest telephone, which happened to be the local police station. I knew the night operator on duty. “Get me the tower at Broken Hill Taffy, and step on it, Jack Forsythe has just flown over Kapiri, and I`m damned sure he`s fast asleep.”

It was the only chance that we had, and everything depended on Jack having his earphones clamped onto his ears, and his VHF radio tuned to the Broken Hill Tower frequency.
I waited in sheer frenzy, trying to reason what the odds were that Jack would come awake, and listened to the controller desperately calling his aircraft registration number. “November Romeo zero two zero, do you read?” “November Romeo zero two zero, Jack, come in you drunken sod, do you read?”

Then the controller came back to me heaving a sigh of relief. “Panic over, Jack`s back in control of his senses now, and he`s doing a one-eighty and flying back towards Kapiri, for God`s sake keep your headlights on and pointed upwind.”

By the time that I had got back to the runway, Jack Forsythe had landed safely, and was unloading his Cessna 172 Starliner.
It was packed to the brim with booze, and how he ever got unstuck at Ndola we`ll never know.

Months later, Jack presented me with a bottle of 20-year-old Dimple Haig. “Whatever made you think that I was asleep?” he asked with a sly grin.
“Premonition?” I offered.
“Whatever it was, thanks mate, I`d have flown on `til Timbuktu if it weren’t for your forethought!”