Chapter V: “REMEMBER THE BRAVE ONES...”

Remember the brave ones who flew the skies,
Dropping their gifts down on the passers-by,
Delivered to London and to Dresden town,
Let the buildings and rubble be their sleeping-gown...

Moving Hearts


At Greenham Common, in the rural peace of Berkshire, the first Cruise missile-base was planned. Local opposition was not anticipated. Then from Wales came the peace marchers who struck camp outside the gates of Greenham’s military aerodrome.

During the years that followed the Greenham Peace Camp became known to the whole population of Britain and abroad. Due to its close proximity our Peace Group provided more than its share of support and the first outreach made by the Camp was provided by a newsletter which our Group printed on an old duplicator machine and whose art-work and copy I typed-up in our kitchen at home. In the early ‘eighties the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp as it subsequently became known achieved recognition as an international symbol of feminism.

My outstanding memory of Greenham however was of its early days when the camp had been freshly-established after the Cardiff march. That summer I had visited the camp regularly to see what was going on. During Hiroshima-Nagasaki Week in August a group of Buddhist monks came to the Camp to hold a fast and vigil in remembrance of the two Japanese cities destroyed by nuclear bombs and to bear witness to the need for world peace.

The presence of these Japanese monks outside a military establishment in Britain revived many of the old wounds of the Second World War amongst some ex-servicemen who accused us of traitorous behaviour. We understood their feelings but that war had ended thirty-five years before and we lived in different times when the monks’ express purpose was to ensure that such a war would never be repeated.

In our home towns we began to keep vigils during that week. Adopting the Japanese custom we manufactured paper boats, lit candles inside them and floated them down the Thames. It was a serene experience and I shall never forget the flickering white lights of our armada of peace floating downriver under the town’s ancient stone bridge towards London.

On one of my visits to the monks’ vigil at Greenham I was moved to take along a white chrysanthemum to give as a gift. I went to the monk at the head of the vigil, knelt down before him and presented the flower. His face lit up with delight and profound appreciation as we celebrated life and each other through that simple yet intimate exchange.


Every October, there were the big marches which took place in all the world’s cities. It was a wonderful feeling to know that each of us had helped to mobilize this huge planetary movement for peace. In the Easter of 1981, my wife and I travelled to Brussels with other local campaigners to join sister-groups from all over Europe to demonstrate our opposition to the Cruise missiles outside NATO’s headquarters. On a cold, blustery day, singing All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance, we converged on the building. The Belgian police, in dark-blue Orwellian boiler suits, stood behind several rows of barbed wire separating the crowds from the NATO building. The main avenue into the headquarters was blocked by mounted cavalry and an ominous water-cannon. A lone mounted cavalry officer held a bugle ready to signal the charge...

On our side of the barbed wire, a young man pushed a baby in a pram with a balloon attached to it. Military helicopters roared low over us and drowned out the speeches being made from temporary platforms. It was a symbolic gesture of peace made in a dignified way. The day ended peacefully.

The following October I joined half a million other Europeans who converged on Bonn, capital of the then German Federal Republic. The effect was to double the city’s population that weekend! By midday the university Hofgarten was packed solid. It was said to be the biggest gathering in Germany since the days of Hitler’s Nüremburg rallies.

A good-natured atmosphere of celebration prevailed throughout the day. Our little group from Oxford had marched to the Hofgarten below a banner which was welcomed and applauded by the town’s citizens. In the marketplace a statue of Ludwig von Beethoven stood solemnly, a German Youth League flag in his hand. The Town Hall, whose façade towered imposingly over the square, was packed with a group of young people singing and hanging from its balcony. A huge Dutch contingent entered the Hofgarten through the Koblenzer Tor archway with blue and yellow placards and Women for Peace posters.

People ate their lunch in the gardens among the sound of guitars, tambourines and accordions. A young boy-and-girl duo, on a makeshift stage put together by the Young Pacifist League, sang Where have All the Flowers Gone? Tears came into my eyes as I stood and watched them.

In a side-street a group had assembled a collection of empty oil drums on which they were beating a thunderous, hypnotic rhythm. The power they invoked seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the Earth.

An old one-legged man with a crutch lurched towards me. “What’s all this fuss about? Why are you all so afraid?” he asked. A graffiti slogan seemed to echo his disturbing sentiments, demanding “Why be afraid to cast the first stone?”

It referred I guessed to the aggressive nature of the new generation of military weapons about which we had come to protest. The incident had served to remind me of the great divergence of moral opinion which existed in Europe between those who supported or opposed its continued ideological division and militarization.

As the day’s shadows had lengthened the vast crowd broke up into little groups. People began to return home, banners furled-up and carried casually over shoulders. Somewhere in the dark I could hear singing:

Wir schaffen zusammen, sieben tage lang,
Wir schaffen zusammen, nicht allein!1

Young folk were dancing gently together in the streets. This was a very different kind of revolution to the uprisings of 1968. To stand up and oppose was no longer enough. The dream of revolution was now as much about evolution and inner, spiritual changes. The soul of Gaia had begun to sing in the hearts of its children.

Again, in Easter 1983, I joined the big marches in Germany ... this time from Düsseldorf through the industrial town of Leverküsen to Cologne. For me, Germany was the heart-beat of Europe’s political consciousness and will for change and soon I was to understand my own reasons for feeling this.


Despite opposition in Europe the “grotesque carnival of annihilation”, as E.P. Thompson had described it, was still on the road. So much seemed to be at stake and the West had pinned its economic hence political future to perpetuating the post-war dogma of militarization. I read all the books I could find on the subject. As I read I began to feel that our cause was a hopeless one. We had not been the first to mobilize movements for world peace but very possibly might be the last. According to its document, AIR-LAND BATTLE, the armies of NATO were preparing themselves for a conventional war — expected around the year 1995 — when the world’s strategic resources would begin to run out. This war, it was planned, would escalate stage-by-stage into a full-scale nuclear Armageddon.

While I educated myself on the causes of the Cold War and rearmament the hot summer sun seemed to disappear behind a huge, black cloud. I began to see the whole experience as a great battle between the forces of light and dark being fought out on metaphysical planes. I found myself, like Arjuna, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra (the Plane of Body) experiencing this invisible battle. Could it be that through nuclear Armageddon the Cosmic Purpose would be played out and the Age of Kali be brought to its end? Beyond appearances were the politicians unconsciously acting out the drama like puppets?

I began to feel myself sucked down by a huge dark vortex of despair. We were really wasting our time. Fate was not on our side and there was no hope. It was foolish to pretend otherwise. I couldn’t bear to remain in that nightmare-world any longer. In some way I must have begun to call out to Mother Earth to heal its child and to nurture it back to strength. Every night I slept out in the garden under an apple tree, feeling the solid body of the Planet underneath me. Slowly, I began to awaken to the sound of its heartbeat within. We were its children. We were its senses and through us the Planet was able to know itself, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the ever-changing patterns of clouds floating above ... and the stars beyond.

Man had blinded himself with his egocentricity, and lived in a vale of tears that he and he alone had created when he had fallen as Lucifer from God’s kingdom. As Ahriman he had entered into a hopeless, self-captivity and was planning an end to all life. Suddenly, I felt drained of the will to fight political battles against such odds. My own marriage was breaking up and I saw myself on the edge of a great chasm.

The next summer my wife visited her mother in Poland as she did every year. I loaded the car and with my son headed for a deserted Cambrian valley in mid-Wales where we camped by a hillside stream. For two weeks we lived very simply under a hot sun that turned us berry-brown.

On my return home, I discovered that the clouds of depression from which I thought I had escaped were still there. I knew that it was only a case of time before I would have to abandon this ill-starred marriage. But the thought of leaving my son and home was too painful and I kept putting-off the inevitable.


Wolfgang, Peter and Martina visited us that autumn from the Düsseldorf peace groups. During our time together I arranged to return the visit. For some reason I could see myself in Germany that winter. As the time drew closer I contacted Wolf. He still wanted me to come but my wife had decided not to go. If I went it would be alone. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my family at Christmas but felt the need to get away from all the stress I was experiencing in my marriage, my political activities and at work. I needed a holiday.

So, a week before Christmas I flew to Düsseldorf. Wolfgang picked me up at the airport and took me back to his flat in a city suburb. I had visited the Federal Republic several times before and noticed how the security systems at the country’s border-posts had grown increasingly more oppressive. An officer took my passport and passed it over an electronic scanner which I knew would relay all its details back to a national-security computer centre where it would be decided whether or not I was persona-non-grata and the date of entry recorded. The details would then be relayed back to the immigration desk where I stood. Over the years, the Federal Republic had been turned into a kind of modern security-state, this being the price of its having become a consumer-society run on consensus politics.

No sooner had I passed the immigration desk than I was stopped again, this time by Customs.

“You have twice the amount of duty-free liquor,” an officer informed me curtly. “Wait here until I find out how much duty to charge you.”

But after a while he put down the telephone he was trying to use. From what I could hear it seemed that his colleagues were too busy having an office party. He waved me through reluctantly. Wondering if all this had been deliberate harassment I wished him a sardonic happy Christmas and walked onto German territory.

I hadn’t enjoyed my flight at all, feeling very strange and claustrophobic inside the ‘plane. The days to follow were to prove of great personal significance to me but I wasn’t to know that until later. I walked into Wolfgang’s flat with a headful of crises and a plastic bag bulging with duty-free alcohol which I began to drink with a vengeance.

During the rest of the week I must have drunk more alcohol than I had during the whole of the previous year. In fact, I was awash in alcohol and emotion and I could no longer suppress all the inner fears which began to emerge through this unorthodox therapy.

Wolfgang loved Celtic music, both traditional and modern, and I had brought him some over as requested. “Have you heard of this group?” he asked, putting a disc on the turntable. “They’re called Moving Hearts.”

“I can’t say I have,” I replied.

As the music began I found myself transported into another place and another time. The song was called Remember the Brave Ones — about the soldiers and airmen who had fought during WWII. I began to see aircraft taking-off in group formation, flying over a silvery, moonlit Channel heading for England. A key seemed to turn within me...

Remember the brave ones who flew the skies,
Dropping their gifts down on the passers-by,
Delivered to London and to Dresden town,
Let the buildings and rubble be their sleeping-gown...2

And, inside one of those ‘planes, I saw a figure, hunched inside flying-clothes, trapped in the deadly game being played over the skies of Europe. I could hardly believe it for that airman seemed to be me. Was I drunk? Was this some kind of discarnate, astral entity whose low vibrations I had picked up? Where was this stuff coming from? I already knew the answer: It was coming from within me.

Over the next few days, I found myself listening over and over again to that song.

Remember the brave ones with the blackened face
Digging the trenches for the human race...

Its words had a strange and powerful attraction, telling me something that I was ready and needed to know. Could it be then that I had lived during that war and had returned now to Germany just to find this out? Though I accepted the idea of reincarnation, I was mortally afraid of its implications for it was quite another matter to find oneself in the middle of this kind of drama.

Was this why I had felt so bad in the ‘plane coming over, feeling trapped in a metal tube miles up in the sky? For years I had felt that I might have fought and taken the lives of others during some other lifetime. The spiritualist in the factory had confirmed this but had told me not to worry. I hadn’t understood what he meant. How could I not worry about having killed? Maybe what I had now begun to discover would answer the questions which had long concerned me.

Anyway, I couldn’t make myself clear to Wolfgang who had no experience of anything like it. He knew nothing about reincarnation and didn’t want to know. He was a Marxist materialist and perceived life within those limited parameters. What I was going through struck him understandably as fanciful and strange. He appeared to be seriously worried about my sanity!


In the days that followed I found myself struggling to understand the new world which seemed to be opening-up and the unnerving insights that had begun to come crowding in. One day, whilst walking through the shopping mall in Grevenbroich, I heard an inner voice tell me quite clearly, “It was necessary for you to return to this country to see it through the eyes of a foreigner.”

I had visited Germany several times before and my feelings for the country had remained ambivalent. I remembered all the other events that had occurred in my childhood and youth which seemed to connect my destiny with Germany. On this visit however I had felt closed-in and threatened. Could this be because of my personal difficulties or did their origins run much deeper?

Seconds after hearing the inner voice, I saw a dark-skinned Asian in the mall who I guessed to be Sri Lankan. I went up to him and asked him if he was from that country. He looked at me very nervously and replied, “Yes.” He was a Tamil and his family had entered Germany as refugees.3 I asked the way to the Post Office, wished him luck and walked away, wondering at the synchronicity of the experience. I had heard the inner voice reminding me of the reason for my visit to Germany and no sooner had this happened than I had met a fellow countryman seeking refuge from racial persecution. The universe seemed to be teaching me a very profound lesson. I had to listen carefully now and to try and understand.


The days passed and it would soon be time to return home. I met a local peace group and gave a talk on the Cold War. It was a depressing subject but we all agreed that it was better to know the truth — to recognize what it was we were really dealing with — than to remain foolishly optimistic. Christmas came and we tried to forget our angst in the traditional customs. On New Year’s morning 1984 I awoke late. Wolfgang had gone out. I knew it was time to write. A surge of conscious energy which needed expression welled-up inside me.

Escaping from the fear of a marriage breaking down, I had come to Germany only to be confronted by a greater unknown. There was no way out. I seemed to have come to the end of a life-cycle and stood facing an open-ended future. The crisis in my marriage it seemed had flicked on some kind of internal switch and brought into consciousness the memory of an apparent past-life crisis.

I could still see the dark silhouettes of the glass-nosed bombers as puffs of black smoke escaped from their engine nacelles when a score of diesel motors burst into life in unison. I seemed to hear those engines revving and warming-up before another formation take-off, to sense the jittery nerves and false bravado amongst their crews who tried to convince themselves it was just another night sortie and they would be back by the morning. I wanted to forget but the memories kept crowding-in, playing over and over again. However much I struggled to shake myself out of that world it wouldn’t go away. The ‘planes would cross moonlit water. And in one of them sat a hunched figure I recognized...

Although I tried to find a rational explanation I knew that the experience had been too vivid to dismiss. I tried to explain what was happening to Wolfgang but my incoherent attempts couldn’t have helped him to deal with the inexplicable. I tried to tell him that I was scared of flying back to England because I thought the ‘plane was going to crash. And if it did I felt I would be responsible as I had foreseen the tragedy. I felt completely locked inside this frightening possibility. I could try either to understand what I was going through and to find some hidden meaning in the remembered chaos or to accept it as some kind of nervous breakdown. But I knew the truth already.

Whatever it might be it was not insanity. The chaos I now looked into threatened every small semblance of security that I had attached to my life. Again, normality was being pulled out from underneath me. Did I have the courage now to look straight into and through the face of that apparent chaos? Seeing my father suffer I feared the thought of a mental breakdown. But perhaps his suffering had been caused more by the fear and incomprehension of others than the illness itself? In my own youth I had journeyed through the lands of the unsane and had come to understand something of the territory he must have visited.

So, alone in the flat that afternoon I sat down with pen and paper and opened myself up to the inner maelstrom of thoughts, feelings and imagery. I waited for a picture to form and very soon something began to emerge. Into the conscious mind swept a flood of awareness that until then my ego had held back stubbornly. In my ‘twenties I had first sensed a hint of what now returned to me in a great wave.

History ... past, present and future ... was all part of the game of consciousness. To deny the game caused pain, breakdown and illness. The only thing was to play the game for through its playing we evolved and moved on because each of us carried an aspect of that game within us. An aspect that awaits self-recognition.

I saw the mythical figure who would come to me as an immortal Poet of the Dawn. For years, I had turned away from this figure. Hearing it speak I had denied it saying, “No, no. I don’t choose this! I don’t choose to see this! Immortality is too painful. Take it away!” Now, that poet had returned to bring with it a picture of the greatest poet of all, whose work was written across the skies and seas, the mountains and the forests as a living creation of art and meaning beyond time. A poet whose eternal order lay beyond the apparent chaos of life.

No longer wishing to walk away from that poet’s revelations I simply wished to stop struggling. Now as I began to write the wave rushed in and washed over all the tightly-shut dams I had built between me and that other long-time reality. Images began to emerge from well-springs whose source lay well beyond the rational mind’s comprehension.

“I was the Bringer of the Dawn”, it said. “I came this way before. One morn, so cold and clear. Early ... before the cock crowed and the Sun, betrayed, took refuge behind the dark sacrifice of Armageddon’s night."

“So here we are again. Here come the black clouds. Trees dying in the poisoned rain. Kali’s dark knock with its deathly, chilling shock. That old déja vu returns. It’s just the way it was before. Things don’t look good in 1984..."

The picture I got was of another time, a past civilization that had come to a similar end. Could it be that an old cycle was repeating itself in our civilization?

“Here come the missiles, here come the blackshirts. Multinational Thought-Police – Capital’s new Global Gestapo. The bad dreams, like skeletons, come crashing through the door.”

“But these times are not the same. Things are rearranged. Though Caesar’s on the run again and his slaves enchained in fear. These times, they’re not the same. No need for ritual-sacrifices to appease the dying Sun.”

“Find Utopia in the Here-and-Now. Seek the New Land and you shall surely find it soon. Krishna’s a woman changing the world, turning it upside-down. Her land is our land, here, Jerusalem’s quiet forests ours: her lapping waters reflect a magic moon.”

“In this Land we’ve poets by the million looking for the way. No need to bear a lonely cross, no need to dally in the prisons, lonely lost and shivering, waiting for the dreadful day.”

“Now the Revolution may be won or lost around the barricades of thoughts, words and feeling. Political communication means a process of Healing! Resistance begins at the barbed-wire fences whose crown of thorns call for another sacrifice ... the price we’re asked to pay.”

“Don’t pay! The message must go out. Don’t pay another sacrifice! Lovers of the Dawn won’t pay again. Cosmic children everywhere, unite. Prepare to be reborn!”

The channelled poem ended and with it the fears. 1984 had come and the spectre of a new totalitarianism. The Year of Orwell was perhaps symbolic but the metaphysical struggle between the forces of dark and light was manifesting itself everywhere. And the grey spell of Ahriman seemed to be winning the battle. Despite the affluence of consumer societies, of which West Germany was one of the richest, there was a deep unhappiness in their peoples. For the acquiring of that affluence had cost them a loss of human spirit. Yet, a new sense of freedom had been born within me.

In the midst of my desperation someone or something was giving me a different picture. Here it was again, the presence that always made itself known during a time of crisis. Once more it came as a picture of the dawn that rose above the dark horizon of the 20th century. Against all odds something was telling me we would win through to utopia and the Golden Age.


The day of my departure came. The sun shone, dispelling the grey clouds and depression of the past few weeks. A blithe, wintry blue sky uplifted my spirit for the first time in months. Something very burdensome had been lifted away and I felt ready to face the future however uncertain it might seem. I bade goodbye to all my friends and Wolf drove me back to the airport. Again, the man at Immigration scanned my passport. This time I waved a finger and smiled, “I’m a good boy you know!” With some embarrassment he returned the smile.

The ‘plane taxied onto the runway. I couldn’t help feel a little tense. Would it take off alright? Three jet engines raced to a screaming pitch and with a forward jerk we catapulted down the runway. My infatuation with aircraft had worn thin. This was a dangerous moment when the pilot had to commit himself and put on full thrust.

I tried to rationalize my fears and to understand them in the context of a marriage that had broken down irretrievably. But there still remained the ghost of a young airman to deal with. It seemed odd, after all that had happened during the last few days, I had chosen to fly with Lufthansa, a German airline.

The ‘plane lifted steeply into the sky. I glanced at the other passengers and prayed that our flight would go safely. How vulnerable we had all become, putting so much faith into a piece of expensive man-made metal! As the aircraft soared high over the twinkling lights of Düsseldorf I sighed a breath of relief and wiped cold beads of perspiration from my brow. We had taken-off safely enough. Feeling very out-of-place among these well-dressed passengers I reclined my seat and tried to relax by looking out of the window.

Just then I felt a huge, powerful hand below the aircraft’s central cross-members where the wings met the fuselage. I had been able to share my fears with one person before leaving and I had asked her to send out a prayer to me during the return flight home. Now, I could feel that prayer as if God’s hand was keeping the airliner in the sky. Silently I thanked her.

Already, we had begun the long descent into Heathrow. Again the fears threatened to return. Though the lights of greater London shone on the horizon all I could think about was another flight when the lights below had been blacked out with only the probing of searchlights in the sky. I looked away trying to dismiss the thought but it persisted:

“You’re trapped inside again!”

I looked away from the other passengers hoping that no one could detect the fear and confusion I was feeling. I turned to the window and saw in it the hunched silhouette of a figure in what looked like a flying-jacket.

“Oh my God, you’re back on the night shift!” I thought, wrestling with some dark and unwanted memory. Just then, I heard a cold, harsh voice.

“Drop those bombs!” it commanded.

I stared at the reflection in the cabin window. The hunched figure I saw there was me and the jacket was really the anorak I was wearing. But the inner struggle that took place inside me was between two different lives. The ghosts of another time seemed to be trying to reclaim me. For a few seconds I wrestled with that thought before it became very clear that no other past could imprison me against my will.

“No! not this time!” I replied in triumph.

I lived in another place and another age. The nightmares were over and as if to confirm this the huge white bud of a flower rose up from the ground below, thousands of feet into the sky, as a pure white vision to blossom open like the blessing of springtime. It seemed to promise me a new life and a final liberation from all the past. I had faced my fears, seen through their illusion and glimpsed a much greater and more wonderful reality. However unpleasant that other life might have been it was now no more than an illusory vibration.

In that moment I felt a fleeting intimation of the soul’s immortality.

The ‘plane began a steep turning descent into Heathrow. A bell chimed softly and the Fasten Seat-Belts sign came on. My fears were gone. The landing was smooth and near-perfect. Minutes later I strode through the Green Channel at Customs and headed for the bus-station. I was home, ready for a new life. And I was free!


© RW 1989