Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Shepherd
    The Shepherd
    The Shepherd
    Ebook66 pages42 minutes

    The Shepherd

    By Frederick Forsyth

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Christmas Eve, 1957: An RAF pilot needs a miracle to make it home as his fighter jet begins to fail, in a story by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
      It is Christmas Eve, 1957, and there are cozier places to be than the cockpit of a de Havilland Vampire fighter plane. But for the Royal Air Force pilot who has just taken off from West Germany, this single-seat jet is the only way to make it back to England for Christmas morning. His flight plan is simple; the fuel tank is full. In sixty-six minutes, he will be back in Blighty. But then the plane begins to fail. First the compass goes haywire, then the radio dies. Lost and alone above the English coast, the pilot is searching for a landing strip when the fog closes in, signaling certain death. He has given up hope when a second shadow appears—a Mosquito fighter-bomber of World War II vintage. The plane is a “shepherd,” guiding the Vampire to a safe landing, and its appearance is a gift from fate, a miracle out of time—but for one lonely pilot, the mystery has just begun. A classic bestseller, beloved by aviation fans (including actor John Travolta, who calls it “one of my favorites because it personalizes the two planes”) and general readers alike, The Shepherd is a gripping, heartwarming tale for a cold winter’s night.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateOct 30, 2012
    ISBN9781453287729
    The Shepherd
    Author

    Frederick Forsyth

    Frederick Forsyth (b. 1938) is an English author of thrillers. Born in Kent, he joined the Royal Air Force in 1956, becoming one of the youngest pilots to ever fly in Her Majesty’s service. After two years in the RAF, he began working as a journalist. He later turned his journalism skills to writing fiction, and his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1970), was a great success. Forsyth continued to use real figures and criminal organizations as inspiration, writing popular books like The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974). His most recent novel is The Cobra (2010).  

    Read more from Frederick Forsyth

    Related to The Shepherd

    Related ebooks

    War & Military Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      'Greeks Bearing Gifts' Will Be The Last In The Popular 'Bernie Gunther' Series Begun In Nazi Germany

      Apr 5, 2018

      The 'Bernie Gunther' books were uniformly superb and reflected their hangdog protagonist: tough, cynical, very quotable, and ultimately, even quixotically, idealistic.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jack Ryan, Reaganite Hero

      Aug 31, 2018

      Jack Ryan, Reaganite Hero
      4 min read

    • Article

      HOW TO… Install Google Play Store on your Amazon Fire tablet

      Jan 4, 2023

      What you need: Amazon Fire tablet (2018 onwards) Time required: 30 minutes What do Duolingo, Gmail and Firefox have in common? Despite being among the most popular apps on Android and iOS, none of them can be downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. T

      6 min read

    • Article

      Felix Francis

      Jan 13, 2022

      Felix Francis
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sue Grafton from A to Z

      Aug 22, 2017

      Sue Grafton from A to Z
      7 min read

    • Article

      Editorial: A Lesson From The Holocaust: Never Stop Telling The Terrible Stories

      Apr 13, 2018

      "My mother went in the gas chamber first," the Holocaust survivor recalled. "They took my sister and me to the bathhouse, shaved our heads and gave us striped clothes and wooden shoes. We started asking for our parents and crying, 'Where is Mom? Wher

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Hit Book That Came From Mars: The Martian started as a self-published blog, and became a major motion picture.

      Jan 8, 2015

      The story of Andy Weir is a strange mix of fact and fiction. There’s the fairy tale success of his book, The Martian, which he self-published on his blog for free, intended for the few thousand fans he’d accumulated over years of hobby writing. Some

      10 min read

    • Article

      Project Hail Mary

      Apr 21, 2021

      Project Hail Mary
      2 min read

    • Article

      Roosevelt’s Posse

      Jul 23, 2019

      Roosevelt’s Posse
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Crime Classic Gets A New Chapter

      Dec 17, 2018

      JOHN GRISHAM HAS WRITTEN DOZENS of legal thrillers but just one book of nonfiction: The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. Published in 2006, the true-crime story profiles Ron Williamson, a mentally ill man who, along with his friend

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble With Time Travel

      Jun 2, 2022

      The Trouble With Time Travel
      6 min read

    • Article

      Worship On High

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worship On High
      5 min read

    • Article

      Here’s Looking At Ewe, Kid

      Jun 22, 2022

      Here’s Looking At Ewe, Kid
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…

      Nov 30, 2020

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…
      7 min read

    • Article

      Storm WARNING

      Jul 18, 2017

      Storm WARNING
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mountain Music

      Dec 31, 2021

      Mountain Music
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Long Way Home

      Aug 4, 2022

      The Long Way Home
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • Article

      Wigeon Under A Winter Moon

      Jan 20, 2021

      Wigeon Under A Winter Moon
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Shepherd

    4/5

    135 ratings12 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Compact and gently powerful. Well done, Mr. Forsyth. Thank you.
    • 4/5
      Not what one might expect from Frederick Forsyth, this is a slightly spooky Christmas story about a young pilot who gets lost flying home on Christmas Eve. I think pilots would like it, and although I'm not one, I enloyed it. This is the story read by Alan Maitland on CBC Radio every Christmas. (Available on YouTube.)
    • 5/5
      -- This slim novel (123 pgs.) is a quick read. Lou Feck's illustrations inhabit whole pages. Forsyth is a pilot as well as a writer. Charlie Delta is a Royal Air Force pilot flying alone at night when he realizes his Vampire compass & radio aren't working. How Delta lands the plane makes Forsyth's novel fascinating. --
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed reading this short story but it was a little bit underwhelming in the end.

      It's probably a half an hour read at the most, padded out a bit, in the version I read, with stylised black and white illustrations which, to be fair, were nicely done and added to the atmosphere of the story.

      The problem is, the story itself is a bit slight. It was obvious to me what was happening (though the author does his best to offer rational explanations as he goes until the supernatural 'twist' is revealed) and I must admit I was expecting there to be a bit more to the story.

      The supernatural 'twist' as presented is the obvious ending almost as soon as the situation is set up and so it was a bit disappointing - I thought there would be some kind of clever subversion or expansion of the idea in the last few pages.

      To be honest, I wouldn't recommend paying full price (it's £6 on Amazon, which is definitely not value for money) for The Shepherd, but if you happen to find it in a friend's bookshelf, a library or a charity shop it's worth reading.
    • 3/5
      I much appreciated The Day of the Jackal which I read 6 Feb 2010 so I decided to read this slight fiction by Forsyth. It tells of an RAF pilot flying home in 1957 from Germany for Christmas. He loses his radio and other aspects of his plane. It is fearsome, but since the story is told in the first person we know he will survive--and he is guided to safety by a World War II plane piloted by a long dead flyer. So, I never having much use for fantasy, the story is not so noteworthy. Maybe if his being saved had been supernaturally aided the story might have been more acceptable to me. But it is a pleasant and at times exciting story.
    • 5/5
      Forsyth wrote this story as a Christmas present for his wife, Carole. It tells of a 20-year-old RAF fighter pilot returning from Europe to England on Christmas Eve 1957. When the electrical system fails on his Vampire jet over the North Sea, his training is brought into use to find the way. Unfortunately a thick fog bank obscures everything below him and he is forced to fly in triangles in an attempt to attract attention. The 'Shepherd', a WWII Mosquito guides him to a safe landing, just in time. Forsyth has written a simple story with intelligence and expertise. This short book, filled with fabulous illustrations by Lou Feck, is a perfect Christmas story, one to read again and again. At nineteen, Forsyth was the youngest fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. His knowledge of flying is manifest in this excellent story.
    • 5/5
      I stumbled across a Frederick Forsyth interview on TV one day (it was about gravel pits encroaching on his Bedfordshire village) and thought, if the man speaks like this he has to be worth reading. Then I discovered the average length of a Forsyth novel, and wavered a bit.
      Then I discovered The Shepherd. It's a gem of a tale, beautifully told, nicely revealed, and short enough that there's not much more I can say about it without giving something away.
      If you don't want to start on a Forsyth doorstop without a little reassurance that his voice is one you can live with for the duration, this is an excellent starting point
    • 4/5
      A novella by Forsyth which is a quick read and much unlike his other works.

      There are sketches included as well. Read this if you get your hands on it. It won't take much of your time and the story is simple enough.
    • 4/5
      A short, simple fable in the tradition of the Christmas ghost stories of Dickens, though transposed to the late 1950s, The Shepherd is a departure for Forsyth, normally a writer of international thrillers. Elements of Christianity imbue the story - is there a ghost? A higher power? Easy to read, it goes down lightly with a nice twist, just as the best tales of Dickens.
    • 5/5
      I get goose-bumps and a few tears every time I read this wonderful little story of a pilot, flying a Vampire aircraft across the North Sea to get home for Christmas in 1957, and the 'Shepherd' who appears, flying a WWII Mosquito, to guide him home through the fog when the electronics in his Vampire die and he has no compass or radio. It is also amazing to me how the truly excellent writers, of whom Forsyth is one, can tell such a story in so few words. He so exactly depicts the thoughts of the pilot when he realizes all is 'not right'.
    • 5/5
      Flying back home one night for Christmas in his single-seater fighter-plane, a pilot suddenly finds himself struggling for his life: lost in impenetrable fog, without working instruments or radio, how can he find his way to safety? Another plane, of a strangely old-fashioned design, appears out of the mist on his wing to guide him. But is his rescuer really all he seems? This novella's approachable length and lavish, atmospheric illustrations make it more than suitable for almost any age-group. A haunting story with a proper twist in the tail. Brilliant.
    • 5/5
      A short (55 page) Novella, illustrated really well by Chris Foss. It is a very good Christmas ghost story which I read every year with great enjoyment. Highly recomended.

    Book preview

    The Shepherd - Frederick Forsyth

    signup

    The Shepherd

    Frederick Forsyth

    FOR MY DARLING WIFE CAROLE

    FOR A BRIEF MOMENT, while waiting for the control tower to clear me for takeoff, I glanced out through the Perspex cockpit canopy at the surrounding German countryside. It lay white and crisp beneath the crackling December moon.

    Behind me lay the boundary fence of the Royal Air Force base, and beyond the fence, as I had seen while swinging my little fighter into line with the takeoff runway, the sheet of snow covering the flat farmland stretched away to the line of the pine trees, two miles distant in the night yet so clear I could almost see the shapes of the trees themselves.

    Ahead of me, as I waited for the voice of the controller to come through the headphones, was the runway itself, a slick black ribbon of tarmac, flanked by twin rows of bright-burning lights, illuminating the solid path cut earlier by the snowplows. Behind the lights were the humped banks of the morning’s snow, frozen hard once again where the snowplow blades had pushed them. Far away to my right, the airfield tower stood up like a single glowing candle amid the brilliant hangars where the muffled aircraftmen were even now closing down the station for the night.

    Inside the control tower, I knew, all was warmth and merriment, the staff waiting only for my departure to close down also, jump into the waiting cars, and head back to the parties in the mess. Within minutes of my going, the lights would die out, leaving only the huddled hangars, seeming hunched against the bitter night, the shrouded fighter planes, the sleeping fuel-bowser trucks, and, above them all, the single flickering station light, brilliant red above the black-and-white airfield, beating out in Morse code the name of the station—CELLE—to an unheeding sky. For tonight there would be no wandering aviators to look down and check their bearings; tonight was Christmas Eve, in the year of grace 1957, and I was a young pilot trying to get home to Blighty for his Christmas leave.

    I was in a hurry and my watch read ten-fifteen by the dim blue glow of the control panel where the rows of dials quivered and danced. It was warm and snug inside the cockpit, the heating turned up full to prevent the Perspex’ icing up. It was like a cocoon, small and warm and safe, shielding me from the bitter cold outside, from the freezing night that can kill a man inside a minute if he is exposed to it at six hundred miles an hour.

    Charlie Delta …

    The controller’s voice woke me from my reverie, sounding in my headphones as if he were with me in the tiny cockpit, shouting in my ear. He’s had a jar or two already, I thought. Strictly against orders, but what the hell? It’s Christmas Eve.

    Charlie Delta … Control, I responded.

    Charlie Delta, clear takeoff, he said.

    I saw no point in responding. I simply eased the throttle forward slowly with the left hand, holding the Vampire steady down the central

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1