Lynn News Hunstanton Turnstone column by John Maiden: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, King George VI, USAF at RAF Sculthorpe

Turnstone Hunstanton area column by John Maiden

My first encounter with the amazing work of Charles Dickens came when listening to an adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol' on the 'wireless' when still very young. Nowadays the nearest I come to an encounter with a ghost from my own past, is when reading the words written in diaries dating back to the 1950s.

With this country's first new monarch since 1952, I consulted the diaries to find out what my feelings were at the time.

For example, after recording the death King George VI on February 6, the following day I wrote as follows: "A cloudy day. Had a bath and washed my hair. Had a 'Current Affairs' lesson on the king's death."

If this appears devoid of any sentiment, it should be remembered that I was 'enduring' boarding school in those days at Wymondham College. This establishment consisted of a collection of Nissen Huts, resembling a PoW camp, but were actually erected in haste to house a United States military hospital in 1943. This was the same year that RAF Sculthorpe opened!

By 1952 many members of the USAF based at Sculthorpe were living with their families in Hunstanton. An example of the growing bond with the local community is exemplified by this diary excerpt: "Whitsun holidays began on Friday May 30. That night I went to a super Anglo-American Revue at the Capitol Cinema."

Unlike many other places of entertainment in Hunstanton, this art deco facility still survives as the Princess Theatre. However, even before this rebirth, the Capitol still managed to attract nationwide publicity with an amateur cast drawn from the local population and US Airmen based at RAF Sculthorpe.

On pages for notes near the front of my 1952 diary I rewrote the following press report, which seems as relevant today as it was then: "A BBC mobile recording unit from London visited Hunstanton yesterday (May 28) to record part of 'They called them Yanks', the Anglo- American Revue, for inclusion in the Light Programme 'Radio Newsreel'.

Mr Ivor Jones, BBC reporter and leader of the three-man unit, interviewed Mr Wynn Lloyd and Mr Graham Fisher, organisers of the show. They also interviewed Sgt Peter Schellhorn, son of a Missouri senator..."

The show impressed me so much that I had seen it three times before coming up with this look into the future: "Just about all the Americans have been moved now, from Sculthorpe to Mildenhall. Some more are coming!"

Needless to say, among the new arrivals were the airmen who became part of the newly formed 67th Air Rescue Squadron, which was activated at RAF Sculthorpe in November 1952, and lives on to this day as the 67th Special Operations Squadron.

The 'Night Owls', currently based at RAF Mildenhall, are uniquely Twinned with Hunstanton as indicated on signs welcoming people to our town from both Old Hunstanton and Heacham.

Congratulations are due to the person, or persons, who cleared just enough vegetation to make the sign visible to anyone approaching from Old Hunstanton.

Congratulations are even more appropriate for Ian Brown and his Heritage Centre team for giving RAF Sculthorpe the 80th Birthday celebration it deserved on Sunday, May 7.