John Field

A ghost from the past.

Like a haunting ghost story in the literal sense, it is sometimes an event in life that continues to nag and tug at our morals, the challenges to the basic spirit of one’s existence. An event or a series of events where a version of ourselves, the main character in our story, is learning about moral values, and summoning the courage to face adversity in uncomfortable circumstances, both defining character, and the spirit in one’s life.

It was the fall of 1971, when Joe was packing his bags for Australia. The thoughts of travel and adventure overwhelmed him. Traveling outside the shores of his homeland was the stuff of his dreams and imaginations, variegated by the author’s pens. As a result of his employment with the airline, the doors to the world opened and ignited his adventurous spirit. His best friend John Field was the pathfinder to this journey, he held the flame of mystery and created the spark, the invitation to join him “down under”. John and Joe met for a short time in those early days working together with the airline, their adventurous spirits entwined, as they discussed an overland odyssey across Africa in a land rover. John always created visions of traveling far away, to distant places, to exotic sounding lands. They had both gained cheap flight privileges after their respective probation periods. It was part of the terms and conditions of employment, a clause of privilege titled “staff travel”. Unbeknown to most people outside the airlines, it allowed travel worldwide at a fraction of the full fare, but the hidden trap was that travel was only possible if and when there were seats available. Booking a seat was impossible.

With no guarantee of launch it made every trip tense with jeopardy. The ingredients for an adventure.

John’s parents had met during the Second World War, his father was stationed with the army in West Germany, part of the country rebuilding itself after the devastation of a regime of dictatorship. John’s father was from England, and his mother from Germany. Joe enjoyed their company, they were a kind, and loving couple. John had been bullied continuously, most of his childhood life, in the neighbourhood, at school, regarding his mother’s country of birth. John was different; and in the small mindedness of a society trying to heal wounds from the recent ravages of War, John became a lightning rod for their misguided negativity, sometimes anger. Joe could feel John’s psychological shield, always wary, always on guard against other people’s searching questions, always prepared to deflect scrutiny with considered answers. Joe could see the hurt in John’s eyes, the chiseled chin of defiance, caused by the continued taunts and provocation at school, and the anti-German hate those children of mixed nationality baby boomers attracted after World War II.

Joe remembers the Morgan family in his own neighbourhood, with the German mother, and the continued abuse the children received. It wasn’t solely directed at the children; adults could act as childishly as vindictive 9-year-olds. The painful experiences after the Second World War were not distant memories growing up in the London suburbs in the 1950’s. Vivid daily reminders of the war; coloured Joe’s childhood memories, such as the left-behind bomb crater, making the local children’s playing area contours more interesting, and the bomb shelters still pending dismantling, after all those lingering years after the ending of the war. The scars had not been erased from the landscape. These were physical reminders; it would take remaining lifetimes to remove the mental scars and experiences of that destructive war.

Joe knew that the bullying and abuse that the mixed nationalities attracted, were from those that sought out weaknesses, vulnerable people, children from German descendants living in and around London, that was not the only one reason for bullying. Bullies are bullies and will always seek out the vulnerable; find a victim. It was an early lesson in his youth, how to stand up to bullies, or better still, to stand up for the victims.

Joe easily found the irony with his early working life, employed by the national airline of West Germany, only reformed eight years prior to his joining. It was a young company, ambitious, and growing quickly, it was an ideal vehicle as a company to learn and to grow in parallel.

John, his newfound friend in the German owned company, wanted out of the UK. John was always talking about foreign lands; it was an exit strategy to solve the painful memories of his bullied youth. Joe listened to John’s ideas about an overland safari, across Europe, and from the north to the southern tip of Africa – Cape Town. Joe had heard the stories about Africa, the vast continent, from his own father stationed in North Africa during the war, the stories had ignited his imagination, now it was his turn to experience it for himself, he thought.

One day John invited Joe to join him on the overland trip. He had found fellow explorers, they would club together to buy an old but supposedly sturdy Land Rover, and the open road was there to take. John hesitated, for the purest reason. He was in love. He had met a girl, and John’s offer came at an inappropriate time in his life. He turned down John’s offer of an adventure on the dirt tracks, and rugged terrain of Africa. It was a turning point in his life. John left, and Joe remained. But they kept in touch, and John did travel with his companions as planned, and he did arrive in Cape Town. John’s adventure didn’t stop there. It only just started, the whispering winds of those foreign lands, rumoured of possible work and a new life in another vast land – the lands of Australia. John paid for a passage to Perth, and worked on the farms for some time, and then moved to Brisbane.

Joe watched John’s progress with utter fascination, the stories, the places, the countries all conjured visions in his mind. It was the stuff of travel blogs, and for Joe it was pure high-octane adventure. He thought, this is an opportunity of a lifetime, Australia here we come.

Although John and Joe were kindred spirits in terms of the appetite for adventure, and the unknown, Joe lacked confidence. At that time in his life the umbilical cord was still tied to his parents, he lacked confidence, he was not worldly at all. His sheltered life and upbringing in the suburbs of London had only been pierced with the recent opportunity to travel by joining the airline. Most of his working colleagues wouldn’t consider travelling to faraway lands, summer holidays to the south of Europe were the limit of their travel dreams. John, by leaving the security of a good job, with no plans for the future, just where the road takes him, had a profound effect on Joe for the rest of his life. This gypsy mentality was so foolhardy; thought Joe, but there was another version of himself, at the same time envying John.

Joe’s decision to meet John in Australia was a compromise. He had only just found a secure job with the airline, he had only started his first steady relationship with a girl, but the voices of adventure beckoned, and venturing spirits would not subside. The invitation could not be ignored, he thirsted for exploration, like a pioneer greets the dawn of each day in the unexplored world.

The life of adventure, the unexpected, the unexplored was tugging at Joe’s spiritual core. It was an unquenchable thirst, and he would always recognize its desire, its opportunistic face for the rest of his life.