Wings of Duty — Page 49

49 Unfortunately, the airport manager had not told us that there was a Dakota-type airplane parked in the middle of the short runway. Nor did we notice it ourselves. Perhaps he had assumed we would use the longer runway. But I chose the shorter one to save us time as it was closer to where the flares were stored. Therefore, we failed to see the plane, even with the headlights of our car on. Later we found out that the Pakistani government had chartered a dozen Dakota-type airplanes from the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), the forerunner of British Airways, through the British government, and these planes made daily flights from Delhi to Lahore and back to Delhi. These were passenger planes reserved for government officials and their families who were coming and going from Delhi to Lahore. On that particular night, one of the planes had engine trouble and could not return to Delhi, therefore, it had been left on the short runway. But there was another peril ahead of us which we were soon to discover. There was a large refugee camp near Walton Airport where the railway line running towards Karachi was situated (this area is now called Bab-e-Pakistan, the gateway to Pakistan). Back then, hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees, mostly