Syracuse University and Lockerbie

Many of you will remember the horror of Pan Am flight 103 being blown up by a terrorist bomb over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988. At that time I was working as an immigration officer at the seaport of Dover in England. I think it was a Saturday afternoon when we stamped the passports of a group of American students from Syracuse University who had been studying in Europe and were now on their way to Heathrow Airport to take a plane back to the States. They would be home for Christmas. I recall joking with them. But they did not get home for Christmas; they boarded Pan Am flight 103.

You can read the account of our paths crossing in my book, Neither Civil nor Servant - Twenty-four years in the Immigration Service.

Not all of my book is funny.