RAF Chicksands

RAF Chicksands was a Royal Air Force station in Bedfordshire, England, which closed in 1997 when responsibility for the camp was taken over by the British Army Intelligence Corps. Near the town of Shefford it is named for Chicksands Priory, a 12th century Gilbertine monastery located within the perimeter of the camp.

The Crown Commissioners bought the Chicksands estate on 15 April 1936, later being rented to Gerald Bagshawe, who lived there until it was requisitioned by the Royal Navy. After nine months the RAF took over operations and established a signal intelligence collection unit there, known as a Y Station.

The site operated as a SIGINT collection site throughout World War II, intercepting German traffic and passing the resulting material to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park.

In 1950 the site was subleased to the United States Air Force serving as the base of the 6940th Radio Squadron, responsible for continued communications and SIGINT operation through the Cold War. The RAF continued to act as a host unit for the resident USAF units, including over time the 6950th Electronic Security Group and the 7274th Air Base Group.

In 1962, a huge FLR-9 Wullenweber antenna array was constructed at Chicksands to form part of the Iron Horse HF direction finding network. This Elephant Cage array was dismantled in 1996 when the USAF withdrew from the site, handing it back to the British Armed Forces.

The Security Service was essentially the United States Air Force's cryptographic intelligence branch; its motto was Freedom through Vigilance.

In 1997 the British Army's Intelligence Corps assumed responsibility for the site, moving the Corps Headquarters from Ashford, Kent along with Intelligence Training

Glenn Miller spent the last night before his disappearance at Milton Ernest Hall, near Chicksands. On December 15, 1944, Miller was to fly from the United Kingdom to Paris, France, to make arrangements to move his entire band there in the near future. His plane, a single-engined UC-64 Norseman, USAAF serial 44-70285, departed from RAF Twinwood Farm in Clapham, on the outskirts of Bedford and disappeared over the Channel.  

Chicksands Reunion  July 2000

 While the memories are clear I thought that I would put some work into writing a relatively serious account of the Chicksands reunion. My orientation is that of a first-term single airman stationed at Chicksands in the early 1970’s; some readers may have difficulty relating to some portions, but I think it is important to put a personal spin on things. Hopefully I have captured some of the essence of the reunion experience for those who were unable to attend. And hopefully I have been just irreverent enough to provide some entertainment for all readers without offending anyone. The account is broken into four parts.

1. England 25 years later

2. Chicksands 25 years later

3. The reunion

4. Ghosts

   Part 1 – England (25 years later)

This section will read like a list of travel tips but I suppose that can be useful. I arrived the Friday before the reunion and spent three days in London; stayed at a small hotel in Paddington, good choice because rail and tube stations are close and there are plenty of tourist resources. Hotels in London are EXPENSIVE but convenient. The weekend underground ticket is a very good deal. London is twice as crowded as I remember it but they have really cleaned up the Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square areas. Check out the Criterian Theatre building at Piccadilly. It is a great Art Nouveau building in the spot where I remember a collection of neon signs. Apparently the building was always there, but under this layer of advertising.

Then                                                       Now

They held the “Party in the Park” (Hyde Park) near Paddington that Sunday, 100,000 people (including Prince Charles) to see Elton John, Christina Aguilera, Victoria Beckham, and others. Victoria (a/k/a Posh Spice) has become a British media mega-star since she married soccer player David Beckham. Saw very little reference to Britney, Sheryl Crow, or the Dixie Chicks during the visit. South Park is bigger in England than in the States; so is Pokemon-cute little electric yellow Pikachu is everywhere. The Dilbert cartoon is very popular. Cell phone use is now the national sport. McDonalds (what I would have given for one of those in 1973), Burger King, and KFC are easy to find. The Hard Rock Café is still very crowded. Americans are everywhere-in certain places you are surprised when you hear an English accent. To get away from this I headed over to the old Bankside Power Station. The Tate Gallery has just converted it to house their Modern Art Collection and most foreign tourists don’t know about it yet. They did a great job with the conversion.

One thing that I had totally forgotten was the length of summer days in England. Sunrise was about 4:30 AM and there was still a trace of light at 10:30 PM. Although this probably contributed to my jet lag it was nice to have so many hours of daylight available.

Just North of Paddington is Little Venice, a portion of the Regent’s Canal that I had seen only in movies. It is lined with narrow houseboats and is like going back in time. I walked from there up to the Abbey Road zebra crossing. Only the occasional tourist ever finds this but when they do it is fun to watch them try to set up their own version of the album cover photo (guilty). As I was walking up Grove End Road a procession of the Queens Dragoons rode by on their way to some palace ceremony. That was a nice bonus as I passed through St. John’s Woods on my way to The Olde Swiss Cottage Pub; a regular stop (as was The End of the World Pub in Chelsea) on my London visits 25 years ago. Another regular stop was the Richmond College campus of American International University (still there) where in the early 1970’s the American college girls were very friendly to an American airman with American cigarettes.

I rented a car at Marble Arch on Monday morning. Fortunately I had made a Hertz #1 club reservation, regular renters had to wait in line for over an hour. A week later I would learn the hard way that Heathrow’s busiest day is Monday, so try to fly on another day of the week; the 2 hours for check-in is NOT an exaggeration. Picking up the car at Marble Arch and heading north on Watling Street was not exactly a prudent move. Equate it to not having skied in 25 years and going straight to the most advanced slope. All those who rented cars seemed to have the same three adjustment problems: a tendency to hit the curb with the passenger side front wheel, trying to look up to the right for the rearview mirror, and opening the passenger door instead of the drivers door when returning to the car.

A final travel tip. When the reunion was over I spent two nights in Aylesbury (according to one of the British Sergeants this is pronounced “Ales” bury, not “Aisles” bury) so that I would be near both Oxford and Heathrow. The Holiday Inn there was better than my Paddington Hotel, about 40% of the price and within easy walking distance of a nice lakeside pub.

Part 2 – Chicksands (25 years later)

A major reason I returned for the reunion was that after not seeing the base for 25 years it had begun to lose its “concreteness” in my mind. While some things still seemed to have happened only yesterday, the overall experience was becoming dreamlike. Well I am happy to report that there is tangible evidence that a USAF base once existed near the Chicksands Priory; those 3 years were not all part of a dream. Chicksands is now called the Defense Intelligence and Security Centre (DISC); operated by the British Army Intelligence Corps with personnel from all British military branches training on the base. The key difference from the USAF days is that it is primarily a training centre rather than an operational site. So it has the look and feel of Goodfellow AFB.

The easiest thing to do is just take everyone on a tour of the place as we found it in July 2000. All six (A thru F) of the dorms are still standing although “D” and “E” have been radically retrofitted (by the USAF) with balconies and outside entrances to each room; what they did was turn the old central hallway into individual bathrooms; you share a bath with the room directly across the hall.

Baker Dorm

The area around the commissary is quite different and initially I thought the British had constructed a lot of new buildings. Then I remembered that Dennis Stiffler had written to me about this in early 1976: digging out his letter he said: “the base is really going through some changes. There is a brand new BX between Baker Dorm and the commissary parking lot. New chapel and Class VI store right next to each other on the old baseball diamond. New tennis courts, new ball diamond. They built a handball court onto the gym”. The commissary and recreation center (both with additions since 1974) and the new BX are now classrooms. Some of the shops and the chapel Dennis referred to are still in operation.

The tiny bowling alley beside the commissary is now a day-care center.

The Library, the Theatre and the NCO club (appropriately in use as the Warrant Officers and Sergeants Mess) look much the same and they expect to start showing movies again later this summer.

Going up the road the supply and transportation area looks the same and the old BX and Class VI buildings are standing. All the older little buildings are gone: Laundry, American Express, Stars & Stripes, Education Office, Clothing Issue, Rod & Gun, the concrete floor of the Barber Shop is a BBQ area – and I have absolutely no clue how I still remember all those old buildings.

In the huge parking lot beside “E” dorm (where the British insurance salesmen used to sit in their cars and where I once bought an ill-fated Harley Sportster), the USAF built a very large Bowling Alley. When I asked the Sergeant Major if the trainees did a lot of bowling she explained that when we closed the base: “you took your kit”. Which means we stripped out the pin-setting machines and destroyed the alleys, leaving them with a shell. We did the same to the Base Theatre, stripping out the seats and the projection equipment.

The chow hall is much the same although it is now called the Junior Ranks Mess. This is where we came for breakfast. But there was no SOS, no peanut butter, and no biscuits (American definition). That was not as sad as standing in the NCO Annex parking lot and seeing no NCO Annex. It is gone and apparently has been gone for a long time. The bus shelter is there, the dumpster area walls are there, the delivery drive is there, the sidewalk is there; but no club. However, there was a bright spot for those of us who like to pretend that we are still 21 years of age. Down where the old commissary warehouse used to be they have a junior ranks pub that is very nice. Pool tables, dartboards, food, and best of all-a sound and video system that plays VH1 Classic all day.

While the clinic looks much the same, the old chapel is gone. Most of the mystery buildings in this area are still standing, with their function just as much a mystery to me as it was in 1974. Fire station, post office, and gas station buildings are still standing but have been modified for some other purpose. Building 250 looks the same and is still used as HQ. The new Intelligence Museum is nearby and most of the mystery buildings in this area also remain mystery buildings; I believe that the Security Police complex was back it there somewhere. There is now some strange combination of hog farm and bat guano factory just outside the base perimeter in this area; on bad days I imagine everyone longs for the old 1970’s aroma of rotting Brussels sprouts. Building 600 still sits up on the hill but instead of having to compete for parking spaces up there, they now use a part of parking lot for camper storage. Times do change.

The Priory looks wonderful and we were told that they had just completed a major restoration. I’m a poor one to ask about the Priory in 1974 because I never went there-that was officer country and nothing good ever came from wandering over in that direction. In fact, I never realized that there was a second family housing complex in back of the Priory until my last week on base when I needed to borrow a car (from someone who lived there) to take a WAF to a movie in Luton. There’s a small “city” back there. The other family housing area looked just fine although seeing the now unused dependent school was sad-I remember many a University of Maryland European Extension class in that building. Apparently the British families send their kids to the Bedfordshire schools.

Part 3 – The Reunion

For those of you who did not attend, you missed a wonderful time. I tried to get in the spirit of the occasion by packing everything in my old duffel bag. When I checked inside I found a copy of my September 1974 orders to leave Chicksands. There is nothing like coming full circle.

While there were not a lot of mid-1970’s people at the reunion, we formed a nice group and did many things together during the week. Mike Simmons was there from Baker Flight. Mike and I trained together at Goodfellow, traveled together for our original Chicksands assignment, and were both on Baker Flight -scary coincidences. Also there were Tom and Marilyn (Williams) Ciszkowski and Bob Trudeau (all from Able Flight), Bob’s wife Jo (a/k/a Glenda the Good Witch), and Gary Graves of Dawg Flight. There is an interesting coincidental relationship between the Ciszkowski and Graves families but it is too complicated for me to explain. I also roamed the base with Joe Lynch who was at Chicksands during the early 60’s. Joe had worked in something called TRANSEC. Not only did he fail to find anyone else who had worked in TRANSEC, he failed to find anyone who even knew what TRANSEC was.

A sincere thank you to the US Coordinators like Bill Grayson, Becky Fahey, and Sharon Butcher who worked so hard to bring this off.

High praise to Brigadier Chris Holtom and his staff; they made us feel welcome and it was nice to know someone was there if we needed assistance with anything. Everyone was great but Joe, Mike and I designated Warrant Officer Hayley Smith as our favorite British soldier and celebrity-she is the star of the ENIGMA video in the Intelligence Museum. Hayley was very helpful, very informative, and just fun to talk with.

I was reminded of just how lucky we are to have had the British Army Intelligence Corps take over our base when I visited Upper Heyford the day after our reunion ended. Heyford was a huge base with a 2 mile long runway, several dozen bombproof hangers and a new hospital-major capital investments, plus lots of important military history going back to the early days of aviation (Handley Page bombers etc.). The USAF left in 1994 and NATO mothballed the base. The buildings are not being heated and everything is quickly going to ruin. It was extremely depressing and I really feel sorry for personnel who return for a visit.

The best way to track the events of the reunion is on a day-to day basis.

MONDAY: I arrived about noon at the top (East) gate, I had tried to go in the bottom gate but it was closed. I was directed to the Base Theatre where British personnel were assigning rooms, collecting money, and providing general orientation. I was assigned a 2nd floor room on the back side of “D” dorm - now warrant officers' quarters.  An interesting coincidence because my last contact with Chicksands had been a phone call in late 1974 to a WAF in “D” dorm. “D” was also the haunted dorm. Used by the Communications Squadron when I first came to Chicksands, they left in 1973 and the place sat vacant for over a year. At night the only lights were the red exit signs; a very spooky place. Colonel George (remember him) also had a room on the 2nd floor. If you had asked me in 1974 what was most likely in July 2000, that I would lead the first manned space flight to Mars or that I would return to Chicksands and stay in D Dorm with Colonel George, I would have asked you what color Martian I should bring back. The weather on Monday was terrible, rainy and cold. You could not really walk around so I drove around the base a couple times and then went back to the Theatre to socialize with anybody who drifted in. That was where I first met TRANSEC Joe who soon headed off with a group to London to see Phantom of the Opera. I had signed up for the “Pub Crawl” and at about 7:30 a group of us got on a bus and headed over toward Old Warden.

TUESDAY: Cloudy and cold but thankfully no rain. I don’t remember July weather at Chicksands being this bad. After breakfast in the Chow Hall d/b/a The Junior Ranks Mess, I rode with TRANSEC Joe into Bedford. Our mission was to find mailing materials so he could ship his warm weather clothes back to Houston. I kept my warm weather clothes. They were very useful; I wore them under my cold weather clothes. For me the “layered look” was definitely in all week. The balloon hangers are still at RAF Cardington although the base has that closed look. I told Joe about the day in 1972 when the Goodyear Blimp tried to dock there and they had too few people on the mooring ropes; the blimp dragged them across the field until it hit a house and deflated. Then it draped itself over several other nearby houses. Anyone remember this? Bedford looks great; they now have an indoor mall called the Harpur Centre. We then drove back to the base for a lunch BBQ. It was supposed to be outside (as was the concert that night) but weather conditions moved things into the NCO Club d/b/a The WO and Sgts Mess. Mike made his first reunion appearance at the BBQ. That afternoon we walked around the base-taking a tour of the Intelligence Museum and seeing a screening of the museum’s ENIGMA video staring Hayley (roll credits please). Elsewhere on the base Marilyn and Tom were renewing their wedding vows (they had first met at Chicksands); creating yet another day of the year for Tom to try to remember as their wedding anniversary. That evening we had a great “big band” sound dinner concert at the NCO club. Someone even thought to park a 1965 Mustang and a 1967 Camero just outside the club entrance.

WEDNESDAY: Here comes the sun, at least for a little while. If you don’t like the weather wait around a little and it will change. VERY impressive ceremony this morning for the re-dedication of the memorial wall, located between the old commissary and the river. There was a military band, individual formations of RAF and British Army trainees, and a host of dignitaries. Royal Navy trainees lined both sides of the procession from the road to the wall. Congratulations to the quick thinking RAF trainee who broke ranks to catch the fainting female trainee in front of him. That sent the Sergeants into the ranks to pull out anyone who was looking unsteady; one from the RAF and two from the Army formation. The Royal Navy stood fast and completed the ceremony with their full complement. I missed the group photo on the Priory lawn but I could still claim to be in it. The photographer (trained by Francis Gary Powers?) took the photo while standing somewhere in Upper Gravenhurst. Identification of specific individuals is a little difficult. That afternoon there was a Medieval Pageant on the Priory grounds; tours and excellent living history presentations. The restored Priory is a national treasure. Instead of attending the formal dinner that evening, I drove to Hitchin to visit the cottage where I lived in 1973. Built in 1460 I was not surprised to find it virtually unchanged, as was the Gosmore village green directly across the street. The old Kinks album “Village Green Preservation Society” flashed through my mind as soon as I saw it. While standing in the street, comparing some old photographs with the current landscape, a car pulled up and a woman got out to see what I was doing. She said her six-year-old daughter had said I was ticketing her brother’s truck. When I explained why I was there she apologized. As she pulled away the daughter leaned out the window and said “Sorry to have been such a bother”.

THURSDAY: Thursday morning was the official opening of the USAF element of the intelligence museum. I got swept up in the crowd as we crammed into the museum building for the opening ceremony. As the temperature inside rose I began looking around for a graceful way to exit. I spotted a couple intent on escape, tucked in behind them, and made for the door. The rest of the day was spent at the pub and roaming the base until the 5PM CA&F Plenary meeting in the Base Theatre. That night there was a barn dance in the WO/Sgts Mess with a closing address. Although we still had two nights to spend on base this was really the closing of the reunion. The next day the base personnel would have to shift their attention to preparations for the Saturday Open House.

FRIDAY: What to do today was a tough choice. There were no on-base activities and I really wanted to just hang out by myself and soak up the feeling of being back at Chicksands. But I had registered for the Bletchley Park/Stratford tour so it was away by bus at 8AM, not to return until after midnight. Bletchley is a historical work-in-progress, as their preservation trust has just begun serious restoration work. Great exhibits-even David Irving would praise their account of Convoy PV-17. Stratford still retains all its charm and we were able to see a first-class performance of “A Comedy of Errors” that evening.

Commissary 1970's

SATURDAY: We were supposed to vacate our rooms by 10AM on Saturday but at 8AM an electrical contractor encouraged us to get an early start by turning off all electrical power including the hot water system. I flashed back to Army Reserve exercises at Camp Roberts and Fort Carson as I cold water shaved without a mirror, it’s an acquired skill. After checking out I went over to take a look at the USAF Element of the Intelligence Museum. The exhibits play up the human-interest angle very well and hopefully some of the 1970’s photos I left (including shots of our infamous Casual Fools Motorcycle Club) will eventually make it into the exhibits. One room of the Museum is full of aerial photo interpretation equipment; now that might be a solution to our group photo problem. I did not want to leave but I had promised to return to a collectors shop in London (yes Marilyn-they found more 1940’s movie stills of Jean Parker and Sylvia Sidney for my collection.) I was glad to have this to distract me for the rest of the afternoon, as it was sad to see the end of a wonderful week.

Part 4 – Ghosts

One thing obvious to even a casual observer was that the reunion was an emotional experience for many of us. Not really surprising when you figure that anyone willing to come this distance must have some personal agenda to work out. I think that those of us who came to Chicksands shortly after high school look back on how people we met there influenced and even determined the ultimate direction of our lives. Many of the things we now take for granted grew out of something that happened at that critical juncture. Wandering around the base in July 2000 these half-forgotten “ghosts” (I don’t mean Rosetta) would appear in both expected and unexpected places, re-connecting with us, and demanding that we deal with them. This gets a little intense but some personal examples are needed to illustrate what I am talking about:

For me the first ghost was my “dead man in Yossarian’s tent”. In Catch 22 (a book I first read while at Chicksands) there was not actually a dead man in Yossarian’s tent, just the belongings of a replacement pilot who had been killed on his first mission. He had stopped by the operations area to ask the way to the squadron orderly room and was sent straight into action before reporting in. Since he had not officially reported to the squadron, his death could not be officially reported and his possessions were not removed from Yossarian’s tent. No one knew who he was or what he looked like and to Yossarian this made his death seem particularly inconsequential. My ghost could be called the “dead boy on Dog Flight” and at the reunion I found him still hanging out in the F Dorm parking lot where I had last seen him in May 1972.

I first met him when we took our British motorcycle road tests in St. Albans (hometown of The Zombies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4nmxz5bQhk). A few weeks later I was tuning my bike in the parking lot when he headed off base. Just minutes later he was killed outside Shefford - driving his Norton Commando head-on into a car at high speed. I went into Shefford to see what remained of his bike and the car; and I’ve always credited what I saw that day for the actions that saved my life when I hit a car a year later. I don’t remember his name or much about what he looked like, only that his parents came over from Michigan after the accident and that he is very likely the reason I was around 28 years later to come over for this reunion. Being anonymous to me now (and with nothing around the base to indicate that this ever happened) does not make his death inconsequential. What it does is to make him like the “dead man in Yossarian’s tent”, an Unknown Soldier who never had a chance. “That is the only thing anyone ever knows about unknown soldiers - they never had a chance.”

The second ghost (hopefully still alive somewhere) was a WAF I met at the start of my second year at Chicksands. Let’s call her “Holly”. The Ghost of Holly brought back a flood of memories when I visited our cottage outside Hitchin; curiously most of them had to do with my extraordinary stupidity in those days-particularly in the area of personal relationships. Hopefully I learned something from those experiences. Even after the mess I made of things she still came up to visit me when I was in the Lakenheath Hospital. Now why did she have to go and do that?

The third ghost was an airman named Jim Cloud. Jim left Chicksands in the summer of 1973 and returned home to Sacramento. I wrote a letter to him during my first semester of college in 1975. Several weeks later I received a reply from his father informing me that Jim had been killed in a car accident in 1974. This news came at a time when the re-adjustment blues were beginning to overwhelm me. But my personal problems looked rather trivial in comparison, and with the help of this better perspective I was able to keep constructively plugging away. Looking up at the window of his dorm room during the reunion was a daily reminder of Jim’s help and of how much I miss him.

Then there was Tom Johnson (our squadron commander) whose office was in the “C” Dorm Orderly Room. Captain Johnson had the almost impossible task of keeping me out of “serious” trouble for two years, and then figured out that the best way to subvert a barracks room lawyer was to put them on his own staff.

The next ghost was not unexpected as she haunted me for quite a while after leaving Chicksands. A WAF who I met just three months before I was to leave, let’s called her Ghost “A”. A short-timer, I was determined to avoid romantic entanglements that summer but found myself spending more and more time with her. Back in the world, I would decide that it had been a mistake to think that I had not gotten involved and to have not said certain things before leaving. To impress her I got an early out to enroll mid-year at Cornell – “High Above Cayuga’s Waters”.  A mega-competitive academic situation that I was not prepared for and would not have dared attempt if I had been in my right mind. This did absolutely nothing to further my romantic cause but after a rocky first semester I got into the game and completed my degree. There is a saying that our aspirations are our possibilities. That degree and the contacts I made through the school have been instrumental in almost every job offer and promotion since. So I did the right thing for the wrong reason. Credit that to “A”; if I had never known her I would still be drifting somewhere.  

Unfortunately the dream life of an idealized first love is very short at a reunion. F. Scott Fitzgerald can tell that part of the story far better:

“Look here”, said Dexter, sitting down suddenly. “I don’t understand. You say she was a ‘pretty girl’ and now you say she’s ‘all right.’ I don’t understand what you mean-Judy Jones wasn’t a pretty girl, she was a great beauty”……….

“Lots of women fade just like that,” Devlin snapped his fingers. “ Perhaps I’ve forgotten how pretty she was at her wedding. She has nice eyes”.

A sort of dullness settled down upon Dexter. For the first time in his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not know what it was or why it was funny…. He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was invulnerable at last-but he knew that he had just lost something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes. The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck’s soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like a new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer,

for he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. …left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished." 

Now that guy was a writer and that passage will also work depressingly well as a Chicksands “you can’t go home again” reunion allegory.

But I don’t want to close out the story of a truly wonderful reunion on a note of gloom. Life at its most basic is just a collection of “moments” strung together. We can do nothing to change the past, but we can choose to focus on the nice “moments”. And while the past is past, each “moment” is always accessible (as long as we remember them), so we can select anything we want to re-experience. In this way each “moment” exists forever. My final ghost showed me how this works. Let’s call her “T”. In 1973 “T” was a 17-year old air force dependent whose mother was none too keen on her daughter associating with us “airman” types. Ghost “T” visited the reunion one morning as I was walking past where the NCO annex used to be. She reminded me of a time (on that same spot of sidewalk) when I saw mother and daughter coming toward me on their way back from the post office. I decided the best thing would be to act like we did not know each other and I could tell that she had decided to do the same. Everything was working out fine until we were just a few feet apart. We made eye contact and then just had to smile at each other (and they were very goofy smiles). That night she told me that I gotten her into trouble for smiling at “that airman”. This was a “moment” I had totally forgotten and it made a very nice gift to take back home - this alone made it worth the trip.

JCE 27 July 2000

Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss does come, in orienting ourselves to it and to what preceded it differently — in training ourselves not only to accept but to embrace the temporality of all things, even those we most cherish and most wish would stretch into eternity, so that when love does vanish, we are left with the irrevocable gladness that it had entered our lives at all and animated them for the time that it did.