大象传媒

Chapter Seven, from Young Henry's War

The war sometimes came close and sometimes seemed calmly remote. For days, Henry and his gang would find their whole attention focussed on childish distractions then, with littleor no warning, the evil of war would touch them.

They might sleep blssfully, unaware of a bomb that had fallen only a few streets away demolishing one or more houses, because wind direction or cocao induced sleep had insulated them from the noise.

Unexploded bombs couild burrow deep into soft earth in a ploughed field or back garden during the night with few noticing. Then, the bomb might explode with devastating and unexpected impact; or lie dormant for years for future generations to discover.

Occasionally, the boys would stumble innocently upon a horror of the night before. One day Henry and Ron turned a corner as they scuffed their way to school, to see the road blocked with a cris-cross of debris scattered over, and concealling, the road. Emergency vehicles, including a fire tender and an ambulance, had been hurriedly parked in cleared spaces.

A dozen or more people, some in uniform, some in work clothes and a couple in smart business suits were busy clearing debris from what remained of the gardens of two houses. More figures were busy close to what remained of the houses themselves. A pall of dust and the unique smell of newly turned earth; of ripped timbers and escaping gas from the domestic mains, assailed their nostrils. One of the houses had sustained a direct hit from a bomb within the previous few hours.

There was no fire, just the threat of one. The acrid smellof the gas seeping into the clay around a fractured pipe gave evidence of the threat.

The walked more quickly and then deliberately towards the pile of debris and the grouip of civil defence volunteers. Now they could see how one hose had collapsed against the next and both had spewed themselves into the gardens. A rose bush poked itself determindly through a discarded toilet bowl thrust aside to make a passage to the centre of the wrecked houses. An ambulance, a green fire tender of the Auxikliary Fire Service, and a big van with LIGHT RESCUE painted on its side were pulled up as close as possible to the busy but not pannicked vanguard of the rescue teams. Men and women were busily passing shards of timber and blocks of brickwork along a human chain as those in the front burrowed into a compressed gap between the ground floor and what had been a bedroom above it. Into the void the recuers dug with purpose made spades and any other implement to hand. The collapsed bedroom floor sloped dangerously down towarss the group of resuers whoi seemed to Henry to disregard the danger overhead. Henry and Ron joined the throng and set-to to place debris well clear of the site.

The first piece of any size to come their way was a crushed kitchen cabinet which still contained packets of food and some china jars which rattled around in the handling and fell out and among them as Henry guided Ron to a clear patch of manucured lawn tostart yet another pile of debris.

A whistle blew and everyone stood still and listened. An ARP man quietly wedged a stout piece of timber under the joists of the collap[sed bedroom floor lest it shoul;d tilt further and collapsed. The boys stood quiet with everyone else and heard distant voices and muted responses from within the pile of briks, timber and jutting pieces of furniture. A papered wall stood bare in stark evidence of the tragedy that had fallen on one small family. Yjey saw the joists slip justa fraction and the whistle remained in the AR{ man's pocket this time but movement of the floor was sufficient to dislodge a full piss-pot from beneath a big bed which had been wedged precariously against the wall. The pot slid incongruously across the floor to dangle, half full of strong looking urine, at the edge of the severed floor. A recuer, awre of the impending shower, balanced a long strip of timber and nudged the pot so that it fell harmlessly on to a pile of rubble.
The small incident lent a certai dignity to the scene, and a couple of the rescuers nodded approval and grinned.

Without need for instruction or direction, the boys worked tirelessly at the rear of the group of rescuers. They cleared loose debris and passed blocks of shattered brickwork, plaster board, ceramic simks and more personal things like pictures and biscuit bareels back to ever growing piles of rubble, as those i the anguard got nearer to the trapped family in a void under the stairs, or so they were told. After an hour or so, and long after the sunhad passed its zenith, a distinctly different and less frantic movement was discernable at the front. Then, in solemn and dazed locomotion some casualties apeared and walked in the lane made by the rescuers who stood aside.

First a young boy walked unaided except for the hand of an ARP man, walked past them. He looked fixedly ahead and said nothing to the uniformed escort. Then a stretcher carried a woman whose wrinkled feet under transparent skin poked out from a hastily placed grey army blanket. Josh saw an ashen, bleeding, face and shredded dress which only half covered the top of her body. Her eyes, which stared at nothing, then blinked, told him she was alive. Finally someone whispered that the next sretcher would carry the body of and old man who had been in the bedroom when the bomb exploded. He was taken past he boys, completely covered by a blanket and Josh wondered whether he had been the last to use the piss-pot.

end of extract from Ypung Henry's War ---------

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