91�ȱ�

This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Louise Adamou, 91�ȱ� Guide at the 91�ȱ� Open Centre Hull on behalf of Brian hodgins and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

“Take more exercise,” the doctor had said on his last visit. “More exercise is what you need,” remembered the old man as he took a late night walk down the lane. He had been doing this for a week now, but didn’t know if it was doing him any good at all. “By heck, its cold tonight,” he thought, as the frozen snow crunched under foot. Steadying himself with his walking stick, he reached the farm gate. “I’ll take a little breather here,” he said to himself quietly. “Just catch my breath a bit.” He leant on the farm gate and looked around. His every laboured breath misting in the cold night air.

He looked at the hoar frost, coating the grass in the field, on the leafless trees on the hedgerow and on the roof of the centuries old church. The whole scene bathed in an electric blue light from the full moon above. He raised his eyes to the heavens. Every star in the universe, twinkling like diamonds, on the black velvet backcloth of outer space. As he gazed at the wintery scene around him, another scene just like this came to mind. One of over sixty years before, of a young boy in the middle of a city. The city beset by war. A young boy whose sole concentration was focused on making ‘that slide’ just a little bit longer…

A little earlier that evening, he and his mates had made ‘the slide’ by running and sliding across the frozen surface on the street. But as the night pulled in, his mates had all been called in ‘just in case’ their mothers said. “Yeah just in case there’s another sneak raid,” said the boy to himself as he gazed at the full moon ahead that lit up the world around him. “That’s a right bombers moon is that,” he thought remembering what his Dad had said. “The Jerry could see everything by a full moon, that’s why they bombed by moonlight.” The boy gazed about him, the world was totally silent, not even the bark of a dog. They had all been put ‘down’, “in case of a gas attack,” the man on the wireless had said. Anyway, the boy thought with school boy logic, “dogs don’t have gas masks like us, do they?.” He thought wistfully of his four legged pal Toby, his constant companion who had never left his side. “Our Toby wasn’t put down though. He had gone to live on a farm,” his father had said… so that was alright then. “I might see him again when the war is over, then he can come back home to live with us again.”

The boy pulled the old pair of sock off his hands, and tried to wring them out. They were wet through with him falling down on the slide. He pulled them back over his frozen fingers. He looked down at his handywork. “They’re okay,” he said to himself, “anyway, only posh kids wear gloves,” was his conclusion.

After another couple of ‘runs’ on the slide and he felt weary. He leant against the unlit lamp post in the street, from which hung a rope he and his mates had tied a week earlier so that they could take turns swinging around. A lamp post which doubles as a set of wickets in summer when they play cricket.

He wrapped his left arm around the lamp post and hung on to the rope with his right hand. Such was the silence of the night, his attention was drawn to the soft purring of an engine high overhead. It was the sound that every school boy knew. It was the sound of the best engine in the world. The engine that powered the best fighter in the world, the Spitfire. It was the sound of a Rolls Royce Merlin. Totally different to the brrmmp, brrmmp, brrmmp of the Jerry bombers. He gazed at the sky to see if it blanked out the stars on its journey across the heavens. He couldn’t of course, but he thought that he did. “I bet that’s an SGT/Pilot,” he said to himself. Joey Jacobs’ eldest brother Frank, is an SGT/Pilot. Joey Jacobs said “all Spitfire pilots were SGT/Pilots,” so it must be true, he thought.

As the sound of the Merlin faded into the starry night, a cold chill ran through his slight frame. He released his hold on the lamppost and stepped back a little and threw the rope into the middle of the street. On its return it began to wrap itself like a snake around the post. With a smile of triumph on his face, he turned for home and the warm fire that awaited him.
“Boots on the hearth, socks on th’ hob to dry off for school in morning. Not too near the fire,” his Mam warned.
The old man blinked and gave a little start as two tears slowly trickled down his leathery old cheeks. “It’s the cold night air,” he said to himself as he quickly brushed them away. Slowly he made his way home, leaning a little more on his walking stick. “Its not wise to stay out too long,” he said to himself as he turned into his gate, but yet he was still thinking of that young boy and his slide in the middle of the street. “I don’t think I could do it now said the old man to himself. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a swing around that lamppost again he said to himself with a chuckle.
Another thing he remembered , Joey Jacobs’ brother never came home again, did he?
“Took of one day over The Channel and never came back,” they said. Joey said he was missing in action. “Aye,” thought the old man as he closed the door to shut out the winter’s night…” It certainly was … Another Time, Another Place!

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Brian’s recollections are wholly based on real events. Brian has written them as an outsider looking in to make his memories more accessible for the reader… but he was indeed the little boy and is now the old man (as he puts it) looking back.

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