PASS OUT THE GUNS!

 

With the immunity of youth, the tragedy of Maud and her triplets were soon forgotten.  Gary, our benefactors of comics and sweets left the Army and returned to his native Cyprus. Before he left he bought Mommy a huge bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates we fell upon and devoured in minutes few.  Our poor mother only managed to salvage two or three for her out of the whole box.  Gary bought me some dominoes and an Airfix Kit for Kev and Don.  I think Don had the Stuka Bomber and Kev a Spitfire.  The trouble with the Airfix Kits was that no matter how hard we tried and how carefully we followed the instructions we always seemed to have a tiny piece left over!

 

 

I had just eaten my fifth or sixth oxo when Mommy appeared.

“What on earth have you got there?”

“Oxo sweeties”, I told her.

“Oxo’s are not sweeties!” she said, “Where did you get them from?”

“The NAAFI, from the sweet counter” I informed her, “but they’re not very nice!”

She grabbed me by the arm, looking furious, and dragged me across the road back to the NAAFI.  The buxom woman was still behind the counter taking the opportunity during a brief lull from customers to read her magazine. Mother slammed the oxo tin down on the counter, right on top of her magazine. I stood there, confused, fresh oxo smeared around my mouth.  I licked my lips nervously.

“What do you think you are doing selling oxo’s to my kids”

“What?” asked the woman, startled?

“You sold my boy oxo’s as sweets!” my Mother shouted.

“That is what he asked for!” she told Mommy.  Mom pointed to the display of oxo tins on the counter, next to the sweets.

“He thought they were sweets”, Mommy shouted at her, “Didn’t ask him if he knew what they are?

“I thought he was shopping for you” the woman replied, looking very unhappy.

“How much did you charge him?”  Mother asked.

“Three-shillings and six pence!”

“Give the poor kid his money back, now” Mother demanded.

“I can’t do that,” the woman told her.

“You damn well will” my Mother shouted at her “or you can get the Manager out her now”

The woman rang ‘No Sale’ on the till, removed a half-crown and a shilling and reluctantly handed them to Mommy.

“You should have more sense!” she told the woman as she picked up the opened tin of oxo’s. “Come on son” she said, taking my hand and storming out of the NAAFI. 

“But, but, what about the oxo’s” I heard the lady call as Mommy slammed the door on our way out.

When we got home Mommy placed the tin of oxo’s in the larder cupboard. “Put that!” she demanded, handing me the money, “Back into your Post Box tin”.  

 

In our ‘War’ against the I Block gang, we were always on the look out for ways in which we could develop new strategies and weapons to use against them.  Don was walking home from school one afternoon, rattling a stick along the railings, when he noticed that some of the pointed uprights were very loose.  Standing on the brick footing of the fence he wriggled and pulled until he managed to wriggle the railing up and out.  Carrying his new ‘weapon’ proudly across his shoulder he carried it home to show Kev and other members of the gang.  An hour later, a dozen kids were climbing over the railings trying to extract ’spears’ for their own use.   We finished up with five brilliant spears and we all trotted over to the Motor Transport (MT) yards where we knew we could find the odd oil barrel or two to practice on.  We rolled a couple of these across the sports field to a patch of waste ground on the other side.

 

We gathered around the old oil barrels and took turns in throwing our spears at them, some of them with great success, others, like me, not being able to penetrate the drums at all.  Kev, our Gang Leader, deemed that the ‘spears’ were actually too dangerous to actually throw at I Block members. We agreed to hang onto them for sporting purposes only.  Towards the end of the afternoon, as we were becoming bored with them, one of the lads threw his spear with all his might at the barrel in a final attempt to thrust the spear through the oil barrel.  Don, standing close by, was poised to do the same.  Unfortunately, for us all, the lads spear glanced off the barrel, it went straight through the muscle at the back of Don’s lower right leg, continuing on and piercing the right side of the muscle on his left leg.  We all stood around our mouths open in shock.  Don looked down at the spear in surprise, and then paled visibly.  The gang dispersed within minutes, none wanting to face the responsibility for this awful accident.

 

Kev and I, with another lad, helped Don hobble the three or four hundred yards to the Medical Centre.  I had to give Don credit for his courage. He was rather philosophical about it all.  At the Medical Centre the Medical Officer sent me and Kev to get our Mother, we were terrified, we knew that a couple of Mothers uppercuts were going to be inflicted upon us. By the time, we returned to the Medical Centre, red finger marks on cheeks and still smarting from Mothers wrath, the spear had been removed from Don’s legs and he was being stitched up.  He also had to have an injection in case of infection from the rusty old railing.  The Medical Officer ordered that Don stay in overnight for observation. The Doctor told us that Don was very lucky that the railing had not touched any bone or important ligaments in Don’s leg.  Mind you, it would be a week or two before Don kicked a football again.

 

Kev also developed the ‘Houghton Pistol’ which we enjoyed firing at small cardboard targets in the woods.  It was made from a block of two by two timbers, about six inches long.  We would bore a hole in one side and insert a peashooter tube into it.  Use a rough file we would make a hole in the top of the tube just wide enough to take the fuse from a ‘Banger’ firework.  We would carefully insert the fuse of the banger into the hole and empty the gunpowder from two or three bangers down the tube.  We would use a ‘rammer’ to push a little piece of toilet paper down the tube, followed by a small pebble and a second piece of toilet paper.  Holding the pistol at arms length, we would light the fuse and, with some degree of accuracy fire our pebbles at the targets.  The whole process, though, was far to time consuming and cumbersome to use against the I Block gang.  We were stuck with catapults, broom handles, dustbin lids and our own hands.

 

During the Easter holidays I was sitting at home engrossed in the latest copy of the Dandy when in walks Kev and Don. 

“Come on, Rick!” they said, “We are going out”

“Where?”

“Come on, you are needed!” they told me.

“What for?” I asked, getting suspicious of their motives.

“You’ll see, come on”, Kev took me by the arm and I was escorted out.

“Where are we going?” I asked again, “I’m not sure I want to go!”

“You’ll see!” Don told me, “This is great”

“What is great?” I asked nervously.

We had left the house, down passed the NAAFI and up to cross the road heading towards the Guard Room.  I was becoming increasingly nervous about this and tried to hang back.

 

 

We finished up standing against the sidewall of the Guard Room, which faced onto the road, and Kev looked down and gave a tiny window a tap with the heel of his show.  The window rocked on its hinge. 

My brothers had a good look around to make sure that no one was about.  Kev knelt down and lifted the small window open.

“Get in” he instructed in a whisper.

“What in there?”

“Yes, in there!” he ordered. I bent over to try and get a look inside.

“Go in feet first” Kev went on, “I’ll hold your wrists and lower you down”

“I ain’t going in there”, I told Kev.

“Disobeying an order, eh?” he asked me severely.

“No, but” I whined.

“Come on, we haven’t got all day”.  So saying he picked me up, and he and Don stuffed me through the little window.  Kev kept a firm grip on my wrists and lowered me down.

“Can you feel the floor?” he whispered to me.

“No” I whispered back, a tremor in my voice.  Kev leaned a bit further in, Don holding onto his jumper.

“Can you feel the floor now?”

“No, but I can see the floor” I said. “And I can see . . . “

Kev let me go to drop the last foot to eighteen inches into the room.  I got up and dusted myself off. I looked around in the dim light, still wondering what on earth they were after.

“Pass out the guns!” Kev whispered through the window.  Taking two or three steps further into the room I saw rows and rows of rifles in racks up and down the room.

“Pass out the guns!” whispered Kev through the window again, a little louder this time.

I rattled one of the rifles.  There was a thick chain running along the row of rifles, threaded through the trigger guards, and a huge padlock at each end.

“I can’t they are all chained up” I whispered back as loud as I could.  I was really getting worried now.  For the first time, gazing up at the little window, I was beginning to wonder how I was going to get out again!  The same thought was occurring to Kev and Don.

“Get a chair or a box,” they instructed.  I walked around the room.  There was nothing I could stand on.

“There isn’t any!” I called back.  The sheer terror I was feeling plain for them to hear.

I heard them have a brief conference.  They did not appear to have a solution to my predicament.

“Don’t go away”, Kev whispered, “We’ll be back in a jiffy”. 

 

With that they pulled their heads back from the window and disappeared.  I stood there, my bottom lip beginning to quiver in protest. As it was, Kev and Don could not think of a way of getting me back out.  Time was pressing, it would be dinner soon, and Mother would be furious if we were late.  They had walked down the road a little further to the phone box outside the Post Office.  Kev, luckily, had some coppers in his pockets.  He telephoned the Guard Room.

“Whittington Barracks, Guardroom, Cpl ‘Somebodyorother’ speaking" The Cpl answered. Trying to lower his voice to sound grown up Kev informed him that he had seen someone lowering himself through the little window. “Who is this?” asked the Cpl.

“I saw someone going in your little window” Kev said again and promptly hung up. In the meantime I moved to the furthest point from the door and crouched down in the corner of the room awaiting Kev and Don’s return. Kev’s head reappeared for the briefest of seconds.  The window flew open.

“Just tell them you saw the window open, had a look in, and accidentally fell in”

“Tell who?” I called back, but he was gone. My brothers retreated to a safe distance and crouched to watch developments.

 

The first inkling I had that all was not well was when I heard several pairs of hobnail boots approaching the Armoury door from the outside.  There was a jingle of keys.  Then I heard keys being slotted one at a time into three locks, top, centre and bottom, being turned with a clunk, clunk.   A brilliant light blinded me as the door was flung open and the lights turned on.  Two soldiers marched in, rifles at the ready, a third soldier, a torch in his hand, followed in behind them. “Come out, with your hands up!”

 

The man with the torch demanded.  I wet myself. “I said come out with your hands up!” demanded the man a second time.

I raised my little arms as high as I could and started to walk towards the door, they still did not see me at first due to the rifle racks.

“Come out with your . . . . “  He spotted me before he could get the sentence out.

The man with the torch walked over to me.

“How did you get in here?” he asked me.  Just in time I remembered Kev’s hurried instruction.

“I was looking through that little window and accidentally fell in” I declared, tears flowing freely now.  He glanced up at the window and stroked his chin dubiously.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck!” he told me.  I stood there, head down, and just nodded. He had aimed the torch at my face; he lowered it slowly until it was level with my shorts and the wet patch.  I felt myself colouring up in shame.

“Looks to me like you’ve had enough frights for one day” he said, turning to the two soldiers continued, “Get him out of here!”

The two soldiers fell in either side of me, an arm on either shoulder, and escorted me from the room, locking up behind me.  Outside they led me to the barrier at the camp gate.  With a little push they sent me on my way saying

“Don’t come round here again!”

As I walked towards home, Kev and Don came out of hiding.

“You OK?” asked Kev.  I was sure he had noticed my shorts but he said nothing.  He delved into his pockets and produced a shilling piece.

“Here you are Ricky, today’s pay”.  I took the shilling without a word, but glared venomously at them both.  At home I managed to sneak upstairs the minute I had walked in and change my shorts.

“Didn’t they ask your name?” queried Kev.

“No, they just chucked me out” I replied.

 

Obviously word got out about our little escapade because some of the men on Guard Duty that night were married and had told their wives about it.  We had a grilling from Mother.

“It’s just the sort of thing you two would get up to!” she declared glaring at Kev and Don.

“Who us?” they asked in innocent surprise. “We’re not that daft”

“I bet it was one of them I Block mob” said Don.

“Yeah, they’re stupid enough, they are” Kev agreed.

“You know anything about this Ricky?” Mother asked me directly, I had never been able to lie to her.  My brothers looked at me expectantly.  I managed to give the smallest of a shake of the head.  I knew then that she knew.  I Kev and Don knew she knew.  Pointing a washday red finger at us she declared.  “If I find out you three had anything to do with it you’ll be grounded for a month.  Mother was always grounding us for a month.  But before the end of the first day she would always shoo us out to play.  It was the lesser of two evils. The only way she could get a bit of piece and quite for an hour or two.

 

On Easter Sunday Mother took us, with about forty other kids and their mothers, to the Garrison Church.  She was not a religious woman really but felt it her duty to ensure that we kids, at least at Easter and Christmas, attend church.  We looked forward to it because we all received small chocolate eggs or Easter bunnies and would enjoy searching around the cemetery and garden at the church looking for hard boiled eggs, which we would promptly polish off, scattering egg shells everywhere.   When I arrived I spotted Rosemary and her mother and panic stricken hid behind the nearest and largest head stone I could find.  I need not have worried, however, she had yet another ‘boyfriend’ and followed him around everywhere as we searched for the eggs. 

“Oh, our Rowthmawy and Nathaniel are gwetting on vwelly well” I heard Rosemary’s mother say.

“I’m not surprised”, my mother told a neighbour, “Poor Nathaniel is as deaf as a doorpost!”