大象传媒

Like most teenage boys the war was an exciting time - life from our perspective had become very exciting. Bombs were going off around us, most of our fathers were on duty (so no physical discipline) - we had a free reign like never before. I was 14 when we were in the throes of the war and probably at my most mischevious, as a community we all banded together and helped our neighbours. My friends and i were boy scouts and would finish school at 4pm and then go straight to the farm to help them - picking strawberries and other fruits and vegetables. I would use the one for you - one for me system, eat one strawberry - one for the people.

Most people missed their fathers when they were on duty - i did miss my father but i didn't miss the spankings - my mother used to say "Don't think you will get away with any naughtiness while daddy is away Mick, because i'll tell him every incident you have been involved in and make sure you get punished."

One incident that still makes me chuckle was the day we were collecting scrap metal for the local blacksmith - usually bits of metal from bomber planes etc. It was a saturday morning and we were on the farm looking for bits of metal from the planes dropping bombs, anyway during looking for metal we noticed the vicar cycling past - probably going to meet some of his congregation. Being altar boys me and my friend knew where the communion wine was kept!

Needless to say we snuck in and had ourselves a little tipple, being an experienced drinker (of communion wine) i was OK to carry on for the search for loose metal - pete my pal couldn't handle his drink as well as me and was stumbling about, next to us was the field containing wheat - it had grown up to about 6 foot and for fun we would push each other into it. Getting annoyed with petes' drunk behaviour i pushed him into the wheat. The noise that followed was not of a person falling in to wheat but of a person stumbling onto something metallic. Worried i had injured pete i jumped into the wheat to find him.

What i saw, to this day still can't believe - pete was stretched out over a unexploded bomb. It must have dropped during the bombings that happened earlier that month. The sight of pete looking dazed, laying motionless over the bomb was (i'm sure he was milking the moment)- i pulled him off and tried to initially sober him up (although how drunk you can get on two sips of communion wine is debatable)

Once we had got ourselves together - we went rushing over to the farmer to tell him about our discovery - he was very calm and asked us to show him where it was. When we got there he told us to go straight home and that he would deal with it.

The bomb wasn't mentioned again and to this day we still don't know what happened to the bomb. One things for sure i didn't take Pete for a drop of communion wine again!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.