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The Shepherd is a 1975 novella by Frederick Forsyth.
The Shepherd relates the story of a De Havilland Vampire pilot, going home on Christmas Eve 1957, whose aircraft suffers a complete electrical failure en route from RAF Celle in northern Germany to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. Lost in fog and low on fuel, he is met and led to a disused RAF dispersal field by the pilot of a De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber of World War II vintage, who has apparently been sent up to guide him in.
His attempts to find a rational explanation for his eventual rescue prove as troublesome as his experience. However, some time after he lands at the airfield—the fictional RAF Minton—he learns that his saviour was Johnny Kavanagh, a wartime RAF pilot who had been stationed at Minton and who had guided crippled bombers home. The Vampire pilot also learns that Kavanagh disappeared over the North Sea in his Mosquito on his last mission, on Christmas Eve 1943, exactly fourteen years before.
Forsyth created this original work as a Christmas gift to his wife after she requested a ghost story be written for her.