Lockdown
How recent events remind us of a frightening period in history.
Over the weekend of 14th and 15th March, a series of events happened across Europe in response to the Corona virus outbreak that I wouldn’t have believed possible a few months ago. Italy had already gone into a total lockdown the previous week in an attempt to contain the virus; on Saturday night France closed all public locations and in Spain the government declared a state of emergency: planes carrying British holidaymakers to Spain even turned round in mid air to avoid their passengers becoming trapped. In Poland, British tourists were in a race against time as the country announced that all planes and trains out of the country would be stopped from midnight on Saturday 14th March. Germany has now announced closures with France, Austria and Switzerland.
As I queued at a Paris ticket office in an attempt to return to England after an ill-timed holiday abroad, the woman next to me in the line said, ‘I would imagine this was how things were in world war two.’ I agreed with her, having been thinking exactly the same thing.
When I wrote the final chapters of ‘The Child on Platform One’ I had no idea that what I imagined to be historical events were about to repeat themselves. In my novel a Czech girl, Hana, is trapped in Prague after the second world war when the Russians take over the country. A talented musician, due to perform in England, Hana is informed that the Russians are closing the borders: if she doesn’t get out soon, she will never get to her concert. I had to find an authentic means by which she could escape. So I was excited, when researching the arrival of Communism in Czechoslovakia, to stumble across an incredible real life event: that of ex RAF Czech pilots looking to escape with their families to the west before the iron curtain descended, staging a three way hijack.
On March 24th 1950, three planes from Czechoslovakia, supposedly travelling to Prague from other Czech towns, were simultaneously hijacked by former Czech Royal Air Force pilots seeking asylum in the West. Most of the hijackers were the crew of all three aircraft. Instead of their assumed destination, all three planes diverted to West Germany and landed at the US Air Force Base at Erding, from where the pilots and their families were able to escape the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. This was the first incident of mass hijacking in aviation history.
It was the perfect solution to my plot dilemma, and in my novel Hana is aboard one of those hijacked planes. I hope the narration of her narrow escape makes for a fast-moving and tense denouement.
As I read of the extraordinary events in Europe last weekend: borders closing, countries in lockdown, people trapped, I realised how terrifying those post war events must have been and how vulnerable we feel again due to another worldwide menace. Sometimes we read historical fiction from the comfort of our twenty-first century standpoint, assuring ourselves that these terrifying events are consigned to the past. Yet, as present happenings have shown, the past has a frightening habit of repeating itself.