Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) by Don Pendleton Page A
Authors: Don Pendleton
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field-surveying term of linear measurement; eighty
chains are equal to a mile, so the cloud was positioned about one fifth of a
mile inside the British lines. The ANZAC observers were watching as the men of
the First Fourth Norfolk began their march up Hill 60 to join the fighting. But
the First Fourth never got there. Ever see one of those old war movies with a
proud and feisty British force marching snappily into the fray? Picture that
here, please; it helps the graphics.
When
they arrived at this cloud, they marched straight into it, with no hesitation,
but no one ever came out to deploy and fight at "Hill 60." About an
hour later, after the last of the file had disappeared into it, this cloud very
unobtrusively lifted off the ground and, like any fog or cloud would, rose
slowly until it joined the other similar clouds which were mentioned in the
beginning of this account. On viewing them again, they all looked alike
"as peas in a pod." All this time, the group of clouds had been
hovering in the same place, but as soon as the singular "ground"
cloud had risen to their level, they all moved away, northwards, i.e. towards Thrace.
In a matter of about three-quarters of an hour they had all disappeared from
view.
This,
of course, from trained observers who by the year 1915 certainly knew the
difference between a cloud and other things that may appear in the sky. And
note how slowly the "clouds" stole away. The affidavit concludes:
The Regiment mentioned
is posted as "missing" or "wiped out" [inside their own
lines?] and on Turkey surrendering in 1918, the first thing Britain demanded of
Turkey was the return of this regiment. Turkey replied that she had neither
captured this Regiment, nor made contact with it, and did not know that it
existed. A British Regiment in 1914-18 consisted of any number between 800 and
4000 men. Those who observed this incident vouch for the fact that Turkey never
captured that Regiment, nor made contact with it.
Not
only some eight hundred to four thousand men vanished but this was a
self-contained combat unit fully equipped and prepared to fight. I leave it to
your own imagination what the First Fourth encountered within that cloud, how a
fully equipped army would have reacted to a bizarre situation, why they
vanished, and to what conceivable fate.
I
give it to you here because it makes my own incident in Brentwood paltry in
comparison. I myself have found comfort in that comparison. But not much.
Chapter Sixteen: Dancing in the Dark
I still sometimes find
myself wondering why I stepped so unhesitatingly into that "fog." It
would seem that the natural mechanisms for personal survival would have
intervened somehow, dictated caution and at least a tentative advance. In
reconstructing the moment in my mind, I find no memory of fear or even disquiet
although I had gone to investigate something because of its unusual character.
But I stepped right into it without a qualm.
Maybe
those men of the First Fourth later asked the same question of themselves. And
I guess I will wonder all my life what they found inside their cloud.
I
found a different world.
I
experienced a temperature differential at mid-stride, one foot in predawn,
misty, chilly coastal California and the other in a bright, pleasantly warm
Wonderland. The scene was both pastoral and aquatic, with green-banked canals
crisscrossing the entire field of vision as far as the eye could see.
The
sky was not blue but faintly purple. Reddish- tinged, puffy clouds appeared and
disappeared in rapid sequence as though the entire sky were being projected as
a study in time-lapse photography, yet there was nothing unreal about it. There
was no sun in that sky—but a panoply of luminously twinkling stars, with an
intensity equal to Venus at her brightest, seemed to be the light source, with
an effect somewhere between twilight and high noon on a cloudless day in
spring, bright but soft and no shadows upon the landscape.
There
were trees
chains are equal to a mile, so the cloud was positioned about one fifth of a
mile inside the British lines. The ANZAC observers were watching as the men of
the First Fourth Norfolk began their march up Hill 60 to join the fighting. But
the First Fourth never got there. Ever see one of those old war movies with a
proud and feisty British force marching snappily into the fray? Picture that
here, please; it helps the graphics.
When
they arrived at this cloud, they marched straight into it, with no hesitation,
but no one ever came out to deploy and fight at "Hill 60." About an
hour later, after the last of the file had disappeared into it, this cloud very
unobtrusively lifted off the ground and, like any fog or cloud would, rose
slowly until it joined the other similar clouds which were mentioned in the
beginning of this account. On viewing them again, they all looked alike
"as peas in a pod." All this time, the group of clouds had been
hovering in the same place, but as soon as the singular "ground"
cloud had risen to their level, they all moved away, northwards, i.e. towards Thrace.
In a matter of about three-quarters of an hour they had all disappeared from
view.
This,
of course, from trained observers who by the year 1915 certainly knew the
difference between a cloud and other things that may appear in the sky. And
note how slowly the "clouds" stole away. The affidavit concludes:
The Regiment mentioned
is posted as "missing" or "wiped out" [inside their own
lines?] and on Turkey surrendering in 1918, the first thing Britain demanded of
Turkey was the return of this regiment. Turkey replied that she had neither
captured this Regiment, nor made contact with it, and did not know that it
existed. A British Regiment in 1914-18 consisted of any number between 800 and
4000 men. Those who observed this incident vouch for the fact that Turkey never
captured that Regiment, nor made contact with it.
Not
only some eight hundred to four thousand men vanished but this was a
self-contained combat unit fully equipped and prepared to fight. I leave it to
your own imagination what the First Fourth encountered within that cloud, how a
fully equipped army would have reacted to a bizarre situation, why they
vanished, and to what conceivable fate.
I
give it to you here because it makes my own incident in Brentwood paltry in
comparison. I myself have found comfort in that comparison. But not much.
Chapter Sixteen: Dancing in the Dark
I still sometimes find
myself wondering why I stepped so unhesitatingly into that "fog." It
would seem that the natural mechanisms for personal survival would have
intervened somehow, dictated caution and at least a tentative advance. In
reconstructing the moment in my mind, I find no memory of fear or even disquiet
although I had gone to investigate something because of its unusual character.
But I stepped right into it without a qualm.
Maybe
those men of the First Fourth later asked the same question of themselves. And
I guess I will wonder all my life what they found inside their cloud.
I
found a different world.
I
experienced a temperature differential at mid-stride, one foot in predawn,
misty, chilly coastal California and the other in a bright, pleasantly warm
Wonderland. The scene was both pastoral and aquatic, with green-banked canals
crisscrossing the entire field of vision as far as the eye could see.
The
sky was not blue but faintly purple. Reddish- tinged, puffy clouds appeared and
disappeared in rapid sequence as though the entire sky were being projected as
a study in time-lapse photography, yet there was nothing unreal about it. There
was no sun in that sky—but a panoply of luminously twinkling stars, with an
intensity equal to Venus at her brightest, seemed to be the light source, with
an effect somewhere between twilight and high noon on a cloudless day in
spring, bright but soft and no shadows upon the landscape.
There
were trees
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