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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mr Parker and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
One cold winter’s day, we went to clear rabbits out of some scrubland adjoining a large wheat field. The farmer asked us to come, he said he had never bothered to harvest as the wheat had taken such a caning from rabbits it was hardly worth harvesting. We ferreted the warrens for three days and bagged over one hundred bunnies fat on the farmer’s corn.
Then we started working the gorse bushes snap shooting the rabbits as they ran from bush to bush. I had the 12 bore and James was trailing behind shooting the ones that got in his way with the 410. I was walking up the hill, it was getting towards dusk, the snow was blowing in my face. Jet was giving little yelps of excitement as he flushed out another rabbit and I was shooting at shadows. James was calling out, let’s call it a day, we have enough to carry but Len was climbing to paradise and there was no calling him off.
We were getting lots of orders for pheasants, consequently we concocted a daring plan. Near the keeper’s cottage was a pine plantation where the pheasants roosted at night. They roosted in the trees to be safe from foxes and always crowed before flying into their perches. There was only an old man, crippled with rheumatism living in the cottage with no phone or not even any transport. The plan was to wait until the birds were settled in the trees, shine a lamp on them and shoot them with a very powerful .22 rifle. The plan unfolded like velvet and soon we had filled my old canvas newspaper bag with long tailed bunnies. We planned another trip the next night, meeting at the church stile at 3 in the afternoon. I was on time, but no James. It was freezing, so after waiting half an hour I set off alone, hoping he would catch up. It was getting near dark, I was walking down a cart track with hedges on both sides. I was carrying the air rifle over my shoulder on a sling and pulled the canvas paper bag on to my chest to act as a break from the freezing wind. The strap was round my neck. Jet was at home by the fire dreaming of hunts gone by and better ones to come.
A terrible crash, a mad man had leaped out of the hedge, a giant of a man with horror of horrors a steel hook for a hand. He lunged with the hook which went through two thicknesses of canvas bag and snagged itself in my thick hand knitted jumper grazing my chest. Then began a desperate tug of war, with me pulling at the hook like a — well like a fish on a hook. All the time we were struggling a liver and white springer spaniel was jumping all over us joining in the fun. Eventually the material of jumper and bag ripped and the man went crashing backwards in to hedge. I shrugged off the remains of the bag and set off running back down the lane, over a five bar gate and down towards Hunter’s Nab and the hermits cottage. The man was gaining on me, but I could hear his rasping breathing and knew he couldn’t keep up the pace much longer. The old hermit was splitting logs in the fire-light. He had a great iron stew pot on a tripod containing half a donkey or some other unfortunate beastie, stinking the district out.
I dropped the rifle over the fence, said ‘look after this’ and set off at a gallop and soon left THE NEW KEEPER behind. (There was a sequel to this unfortunate occurrence. About nine years on, after five years in the British Army, I found myself at a loose end and applying to the local council in reply to an ad RODENT OPERATIVE CLASS 2, ratcatcher, I met the only other applicant in the council offices waiting room. He was tall and good looking with blond hair, wearing a smart Derby tweed suit and holding a deerstalker. I thought at first it was Robert Redford down on his luck. He was very friendly and asked after my health. Then he said,’You don’t remember me’. I said, ‘no’. He then made a feint at my chest with his right hand only now there was no hook, only a black glove on a dummy hand. I really shook with the memory and the horror. ‘I didn’t mean to hook you’ he went on. ‘I tripped over the dog and was scared as you’. I learned he was desperate for a job as his wife had threatened to leave, she couldn’t face another winter of cold and loneliness with owls and foxes and bats screeching all night and two miles to the kids school. I said,’ The job’s yours’. He asked, ’What shall I tell this lot,’ nodding towards the office. I said, ‘Tell them I thought a RODENT OPERATIVE drove a machine for cracking nuts and I’m scared of rats’. We shook hands Boy Scouts style and I left. We never met again, but I heard he was given the job and was very successful.
One night the German bombers came and dropped hundreds of incendiary bombs, they managed to burn a factory down but dozens fell harmlessly in the woods and field and quite a lot never exploded. These were my (babies). The World War 2 German incendiary bomb is a beautiful object. About eighteen inches long, made of aluminium and stuffed with manganese with a steel flight it was a work of art.
I used to screw the end off, take out the primer, empty all the explosive manganese out and declare them inert. They then became valuable trading pieces. I once had a theory why they were having so many duds but the German embassy was closed and I had no way of communicating with them. It’s maybe just as well, as me and William Joyce might have been sharing a cell.
It was around the spring of ’44 that a U.S. B39 Flying Fortress crashed on the moors above the village. It came down in soft peat and incredibly the eleven man crew survived the crash. Tough guys these Yanks. Soon live cannon shells were circulating round the schools, and something had to be done. Our headmaster declared an amnesty on war trophies. An officer from the Royal Engineers and two sappers were visiting the school. We were to bring all our treasures and inert items would be given back. I took a few empty 303 cases and an incendiary bomb along with an empty parachute flare case with flights made to be fired out of a two inch mortar. All this hard work was laid out in the school yard to be inspected by the sappers. It was like an open day at the Imperial War Museum.
The head master expressed surprise that I had contributed so little to the display, I explained two lads were bringing more on the bus. I could only carry so much on my push bike. The incendiary bombs were declared unsafe out of hand, although only they were empty cases, the practice hand grenades with the red stripes, lost in the heather by squaddies too lazy to look for them, were taken to be thrown again. All the live rounds were taken away of course. A few empty cases and bits of shrapnel, handed in by the little kids were handed back. Then the officer examining a Mills 36 Grenade went white, started stuttering and in an unsteady voice, said,’ Evacuate the AREA walk don’t run’. He’d found a fully primed hand grenade, a very dangerous object. And that said John was that.
A few days passed and no news from James. I didn’t like visiting the house. Last time I was there, Jet left big wet paw marks on the kitchen floor, and ate the cat food and finished up getting shoo’d out with Dad, wearing an apron and wielding a floor clout. So I walked over to a nearby village where James had a cousin. There I learned that while I was awaiting James on the day of the ‘hook’ he had rowed with his father and gone to Bradford, signed on in a famous Yorkshire Regiment and was doing basic training at Richmond or Catterick.
I saw him in March when he finished his training, he had grown four inches, but was very fit and confident. They wanted to send him to Officer’s School but he wasn’t interested. We didn’t go shooting, apart from some fun we had with a Short Magazine Lee Enfield Rifle he had brought with him, in an old quarry.
His mother was busy proudly parading her warrior son around the relations and I never even saw him again before he returned to his regiment. On the 6th of June 1944 he landed on Gold (or Sword) Beach with the Green Howards in the greatest invasion the world had ever seen. James was clear of the beach without a scratch. I was sure of this because an uncle of mine a corporal in the Royal Engineers had been there since 2 a.m clearing mines. James called out, ’You haven’t got so far have you Shorty?’ and my uncle replied, ’Yes, and there’s some b----- good lads didn’t get this far’. He was always one for a quick quip.
In August my mother came back from the shops to say she had heard James had been 'wounded in action' as the telegram put it. I didn't want to intrude on the family so I stayed away hoping to hear more from some other source, but after hearing nothing for two days I visited the house.
James's mother asked me in, her face was all puffed up with crying. I asked after James and she couldn't speak for sobbing. She pulled me into her bust, should I say her ample bust and held me tight. Even then I knew she was holding her son by proxy so I endured the loving. Though this is not the best of positions for a teenage boy to be in. After a while, with my eyes stinging from her perfume and wire from her bra sticking in the side of my nose, I broke free.
Dad looking like a corpse would have liked to hug me, but people in those days didn't hug men-he went to shake my hand, then thought better of it, put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Don't join the army son'. In the ignorance of youth, and coming from a large family with a father who was completely indifferent to his children. I was totally unaware until I got children of my own, how much a father can love his children.
(I set off to go), I neared the door when Mum said something that stopped me in my tracks,'They are flying him into the South of England soon and hoping to save his leg'. It wasn't as if I was unaware of the destruction of modern warfare. The village was full of men without legs, arms, fingers, hands, but these were middle aged men, who for all I knew had been born that way and were used to being disabled. I had never considered that these men were teenagers, maimed in the most horrific circumstances and having to live out their lives that way. When I heard that James was wounded, I imagined him lying in a clean bed with a neat bullet hole in his shoulder, being comforted by a pretty nurse. I never thought of him surrounded by blasted corpses, screaming out with the pain of a shattered leg. And what of the future -James who could jump like a roe deer and run like a hare, confined to crutches for life. May God forgive all humanity. I walked home the long way past our hunting grounds, sobbing and unable to stop. I was lost in misery.
About two weeks later I received an envelope containing two, two pound postal orders and the stark message, BUY ME A DOG. Two days later another envelope with a two pound postal order FEED IT was the message this time. I travelled on a bus to a village near Barnsley where a man bred fine whippets, James loved this breed of dog. The man's name was Patrick Flaherty and he was quite famous amongst the miners who knew a good whippet when they saw one. He had a beauty 'pick of the litter', 'I was keeping him for breeding', 'I have refused a fortune', 'would break my heart to part with him',' My wife loves him' and many more. The price was £6. I explained it was for a wounded soldier and as a patriotic Englishman would he take five. He said no, but as a patriotic Irishman he could. He spit on his hand and slapped it against mine and the deed or deal was done. I christened him there and then, Monty, and for some reason my fare home on the bus was four pence and his was six.
Next day I took Monty down to his new home. He was made very welcome. Mum had cheered up as James was improving and was soon coming nearer home. Monty, who had never had the comfort of a house sniffed around and jumped onto an armchair by the fire. Mum laughed and said,' Arthur, you are going to have to find a new chair for yourself. That dog didn't want a chair, he wanted a throne and adoring attendants -he already had.
A month later James was home, looking very well for a man who had suffered such a traumatic experience. First on crutches, then two sticks-one stick, then none. Everywhere he went, Monty was there, the little faithful dog had found a master and James was getting stronger every day.
I never managed to have any conversations with James after this. Something had put a barrier between us. His interest in shooting, along with his interest in furthering his education was gone. He was not depressed or bitter, just very gentle and thoughtful. I once asked him to explain how he came to be injured. He said, 'I am training myself to clear my mind of the whole b------ disaster, but you are my friend, I will give you the outline and then never want it referred to again.'
'We had been a four man team on a forward O.P (Observation Post) with a 19 set Trans-receiver. There was a battery of our 25lbs guns shelling forward of the Infantry. Suddenly shells started falling amongst the advancing infantry, the code for this was apples meaning shells falling short. James remembers saying apples, apples, apples, a tremendous bang and three corpses and one shattered leg. I wouldn't mind said James but it was definitely one of our own shells.' 'Rifles at the trail, quick march! Don't look back because she won't be waiting'.

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