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..return to Personal Recollections & War Diaries Paroi - Noble Field with a Snake as Pax. It was 11 February 1955 and I was down to take VF 626, an Auster VI, from the Flight base at Seremban to Noble Field, KL, a 30 minute trip. It was a lovely morning and climbing out on a northerly heading to 1800 feet, the world looked its usual beautiful self at 0830hrs. Passing over the ridge that lay between Negri Sembilan and Selangor, I thought for a moment that I had seen a movement somewhere at the bottom edge of the windshield where two tubular struts ran vertically down behind the instrument panel combing - a cockroach perhaps, but no, nothing. Eyes back on the horizon again - but not for long! There was something behind the instrument panel - for a forked tongue flicked and flicked again, and disappeared - just where one of those struts went down through a hole in the combing. A moment later, waving slightly from side to side, a beautiful large snake came up before my eyes, about 3 feet in front of face, wound around the left of those two struts, stopped and just looked at me. The day's heat was yet to materialise, especially as I flew without the port door fitted in order to get better downward observation, but I realised that I was sweating. "Vhat to do, Master?" as my Indian Bearer used to say, in another age and another sub-continent. First cool thing down with altitude, I thought, so I put the aircraft into a steady climb to 3500ft and waited for noble Field to heave into sight. From now on everything had be done very slowly, and I began to close the throttle for an approach to land. Even half and then full flap had to be reached for as slowly as possible - and so we came to a sweaty rumbling landing on the laterite surface of Noble Field. The switches were off and the engine stopped in the middle of the strip as I escaped at a smart trot from what I thought had been a close run thing. The ground crew at Noble Field, were quick to spot something wrong and were out there in seconds with extinguishers, the lot, until I explained the reason for my sudden exit. The upshot of this little adventure was that the snake, scared for its life, disappeared from view down the starboard wing-root inspection panel. As it refused to come out the wing had to come off to get it out. A photograph appeared a year later in the Auster News from Rearsby showing the ground crew holding a six footer over two sticks with a suitable caption, but I could no longer get a round of drinks on that story when it was found that the snake was harmless! updated 4th September 2010
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