New book features memories of wartime experiences at South Cumbrian airfield

The £7.99 book is called Ad Astra and All That - The Road to Mandalay from Cark and is based on a manuscript prepared by the wartime RAF signals officer Geoffrey Ardron - but not published before his death in 1999.

His story features the setting up of the new airfield near Flookburgh - now the base of the Cumbria Steam Gathering and charity parachute jumps - and later RAF service in India and the jungles of Burma.

His daughter Sheridon Hodds, of Grange, who said it was an honour and privilege to see the book in print, has added biographical notes about her father's important work with Unilever and the Horseracing Totalisator Board - The Tote.

There will be a book signing event at Grange Library, on Grange Fell Road, from 10am to 12pm on Monday, October 7.

As a lowly Acting Pilot Officer, Mr Ardron had been thrown in at the deep end at RAF Cark and told to get the airfield's vital communications systems set up - by ingenuity and by breaking all the rules.

Officers, strongly prompted by Wing Commander Gibb, begged and borrowed everything from a piano and billiards table to a bespoke station flag - and managed to get a bare brick hall fitted out with timber beams in the Elizabethan style.

In May 1972 the signals officer returned to what was left of the former airfield for a ceremony to lay up the station flag in Flookburgh church.

Mr Ardron wrote: "The Guardroom was gone, buildings were in ruin and the runways overgrown.

"I did find the Station Headquarters, windowless and with weeds growing through its floors."

He thought the RAF camp had been forgotten but was proved wrong by the throng of villagers and former RAF staff and trainees who filled the church and the centre of Flookburgh well into the evening.

He noted: "The night was filled with hoots as old friends recognised each other after a lapse of 30 years."