Your Berkhamsted editorial From the Editor December 2010 The Parish Magazine of Contents St Peter's Great Berkhamsted In this month’s issue... In this month's Your Berkhamsted we Leader by Fr Michael Bowie 3 are, of course, celebrating Christmas. Air crash at Ashridge 5 Cathy Edmunds has some suggestions on ways to spend your Christmas in 12 ideas for Christmas 9 Berkhamsted, including great local walks and food. Meanwhile, Fiona Powell has been learning from the Berkhamsted Lions Letter to Santa 12 about when Santa’s elves will be in town this year. Little Spirit - Chapter 3 14 We are pleased to welcome a new Parish News 15 contributor to the magazine this month. Dan Parry’s account of a tragic air crash in Phillip Conway-Brown 21 Ashridge over sixty years ago offers an interesting insight into our area’s history. A Christmas Carol 23 Save Your Berkhamsted residents’ association informs us of a public Public Consultation 27 consultation on the town’s future which will affect all of us who live here, we bring Community pages 28 you the third chapter of our serial Little Spirit, and tenor Phillip Conway-Brown tells us about his Berkhamsted. Editorial contacts and info 30 Ian Skillicorn, Editor Last Word - The Christmas Story 31 We welcome contributions, suggestions for articles and news items, and readers’ letters. For all editorial and advertising contacts, and for copy dates, please refer to page 30. Cover photo: "Berkhamsted in Winter". Photo page 7: a B-17G aircraft taken from the National Museum of the USAF. Photo page 9: courtesy of Luis Costa Responsibility for opinions expressed in articles and letters published in this magazine and for the accuracy of any statements in them rests solely with the individual contributor. Your Berkhamsted has no affiliation with the Save Your Berkhamsted campaign. 2 Leader Your Berkhamsted Leader by Fr Michael Bowie I was captivated by the heard one Chilean remark, ‘we can be unfolding rescue of the known for something other than Pinochet Chilean miners. At first and earthquakes; we have shown we can I thought my interest pull together and solve a problem might be heightened by ourselves’. personal connection. But, for me, the best commentary on this But the story fascinated people who knew story came from Giles Fraser in the no more about Chile than a good bottle of Church Times: he saw this rescue as a wine. For me, there was something perfect metaphor for the core story of elementally compelling and moving about Christianity. We usually call it the rescue. I think it was partly the human ‘salvation’ (a churchy word) or scale of it: 33, the number of those ‘redemption’, from the (now happily trapped underground, is the number in a quaint) vocabulary of freeing slaves. But school class, a room full of people, a the central narrative of Christianity medium-sized meeting, a small church (which has its physical beginning in the service; it is easy to understand the birth of Jesus) is, in modern English, mixture of claustrophobia and hope and ‘rescue’. Christianity is not, primarily, the familial repercussions of their about being nice or behaving ethically. situation. Events on the scale of tsunamis Those things we can do by an exercise of and earthquakes, fires and floods are more will. However, as St Augustine difficult to comprehend: we should, for understood, we are often so addicted to example, continue to be aware of the pleasing ourselves in destructive ways urgent needs of the poor people of Haiti. that, too often, we don’t make the effort. We get stuck underground, cut off from I watched, as I’m sure many of you did, light and life, on a treadmill of the live coverage on BBC 24, as the men competitiveness and alleged success. The were pulled from the ground and reunited point of Christmas is to remind us that with their families. I couldn’t stop there is a source of light, and rescue, watching it, willing them to get all Los 33 readily available to us, because God came above ground. Other things had compelled down into the pit and worked with us my attention through the weeks – the until, at Easter, he broke out into the full immediate impulse to set up shrines, to glare of light and offered us the chance to celebrate Mass, to burn candles and pray come with him. If we use that truth to for each of the men; the invocation of the guide our lives and our choices, to put local statue of the Virgin Mary – Our successes as well as problems into Lady of the Candellaria who was asked, perspective, to see how we should regard together with San Expedito (who is, in others and their needs as well as our own, Chile, the patron saint of getting things the potential of our lives is hugely done), to watch over the men. There was enhanced. Christmas is our welcome to also the pride in the rescue-technology, the light at the end of the tunnel. yB developed by the Chilean navy: ‘at last’, I 3 on 822191 or 0796 7019031 4 Local history Air crash at Ashridge Dan Parry recounts the fate of a group of American airmen whose aircraft crashed in Ashridge sixty seven years ago this month Just up the A4506, the ghostly remains of aircraft with guns they could fend off ancient fields, farms and forts litter our German fighters during the day, when local countryside. The likes of Gallows they would have a better chance of seeing Hill, Witchcraft Bottom and Moneybury their target. The formidable B-17 Flying Hill ooze history from their very pores. Fortress – star of the film Memphis Belle Berkhamsted, (the farmstead among the – carried no less than 13 heavy machine- birch trees, or perhaps among the bergs, guns, and consequently required many i.e. hills, depending men to operate them on whom you all. Seven of believe), is Quillman’s 10-man surrounded by crew were ancient evidence of responsible for feasting and famine, protecting the heavy of settlements and aircraft from the trackways; and of dreaded threat of war. enemy fighters. Even if attacked, all was For ten young not lost. Fire, Americans, New mechanical failure, Year’s Eve 1943, Tree stumps and scarring at the crash site today mid-air collisions and began as another day air attack all took their in action, fighting their war thousands of toll, yet time and again B-17s returned miles from home. It was to end in a fatal from a raid missing part of the tail or with collision in lonely woodland above an engine stalled and feathered. Pilots had Aldbury, where memories of their kept their plane hanging in the air under sacrifice still haunt the area. Scars of the the most difficult conditions. crash linger just a wingspan or two from the warming mugs of tea served up by the On December 31st 1943, the 305th Bomb staff of the National Trust café. Group took off from Chelveston in Northamptonshire, tasked with destroying Pilot 2nd Lt. John Quillman commanded an airbase in Bordeaux, home to the long- one of the most experienced crews in the range enemy aircraft that roamed the 305th Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Atlantic, harrying Allied shipping. It’s Force. With 23 missions under their belt, believed that while they were over the two more would give them a ticket home. target area, Quillman’s crew were spotted It was not an impossible prospect. Their by a force of 18 fighters. When an enemy B-17 aircraft had a legendary reputation plane came racing towards the cockpit, for its ability to absorb damage. While the head-on and approaching at a closing RAF’s heavy bombers flew at night, the speed in excess of 400mph, its machine- Americans believed that by filling their guns carved up the cabin, killing the co- 5 http://www.blairelectrical.com PETER D HANNABY Painter and Decorator Interior and exterior work undertaken. For competitive quotations please call: mbl: 07765 250092 home: 01442 288956 Wi l l Ki m b e r l e y Berkhamsted Berkhamsted Carpet Cleaning Oven Cleaning 01442 255784 Ltd Ltd carpets complete valet service for Gras s c utting oriental rugs all ovens, hobs Hedge trimming upholstery and extractors Patios cleaned x residential & commercial Gutters cleared x professional x good value x professional x good value x fully insured x fully insured All cuttings and clippings removed David Green David Green References available 01442 876622 01442 876622 0788 405 8795 0788 405 8795 Why not phone PO Box 903 Berkhamsted PO Box 903 Berkhamsted Herts HP4 3ZQ for a quote? Herts HP4 3ZQ www.berkhamstedovencleaning.co.uk www.berkhamstedcarpetcleaning.co.uk www.berkhamstedcarpetcleaning.co.uk 6 Local history pilot, 2nd Lt. part of the Ralph Blake, aircraft’s body and leaving and making the Quillman Fortress harder with serious to control than stomach ever. Flying at injuries. low level in unfamiliar hilly Losing blood, ground on a unable to call foggy evening in on the help the dark depths of an of December, the experienced co-pilot and having lost some end was inevitable. Screaming in above of the power from two of the four engines, Aldbury, the aircraft plunged into the Quillman had no choice but to get back to woods south of the Ashridge monument. England as soon as possible. The question A local nurse scrambled up the hill to help of whether he could nurse his plane, his the wounded, and searching beside the crew and himself through the three-hour burning wreckage she found men with flight home must have pressed upon him dreadful injuries.