大象传媒

May 5th 2005

I rely on the radio nowadays. Jeremy Vine reckons the turnout's going to be the lowest in living memory. I run through the checklist: arthritis, glaucoma, hearing aid, shrapnel - you learn to live with it over the years. And you understand the pain far more than voters' apathy. If they've no confidence in modern politicians, why don't they spoil their papers? Let them go through conscription - they'd be first in the queue for the polling station. Democracy at work, I suppose. Anyway, I curse the cramp in my writing hand and squint at the blank page, speculating (if Vine's to be believed) on whether or not it was worth it.

May 1944

A wet spring in the bleak uplands. Let's change the name to protect the innocent...and the guilty. Dalton Training Camp, and here's yours truly, twenty-eight and fit as a flea. Through the ranks to sergeant within eighteen months and absolutely loving it. Yes indeed. Apart from combat, anyone would prefer army life to blistering your youth in twelve-hour shifts at Standfast Mill. Fresh air, endless football and three hot meals a day with the nation wasting away on ration books. Who could complain?

It was cool in the hut in spite of the three-dozen bodies crammed on benches. Not one over twenty on the front row. All windows down, cigarette tips working up a fug, after-lunch chatter and Lieutenant Knowles stood by the top table with an open handbook and a wired-up grenade.

Not a real grenade.

"A lethal weapon in a trench or a shell crater; any enclosed space, in fact," screeched Knowles.

Especially a hut.

There was a rushing sound, like water down a drain. Eddie Hapgood was stood by the door and he sank gently to the floor. Not a scratch on him, so they told me. That's what blast can do. Not a mark on Knowles either, although he lost his mind that May afternoon, and serve him right.

I came to in the ambulance with someone stabbing red-hot needles into my leg; at least that's what it felt like. Jimmy Holloway was on the stretcher above me, head lolling and blood dripping onto my forehead. Nimble on his feet was Jimmy, skipping around the Winter Gardens' dance floor on a Saturday night. Quite a ladies' man. No longer. Not with a spike of yellow shrapnel skewering his face from right ear to left cheek. He survived... of sorts. There was a bucket of severed limbs by the door and their previous owners screaming the afternoon away with every jolt of the ambulance. Very effective, the humble Mills Bomb.

Fourteen died that day, seventeen got a pension and one went mad. Nowadays, when I think of Knowles... well, perhaps I escaped lightly. No wonder they hushed it up.

May 5th 2005

It's a funny thing, shrapnel. It suddenly appears - the physical manifestation of a bad memory. It roams your body for half-a-century before surfacing. In nineteen-eighty-seven it crawled like a worm down my forehead. A decade later a sliver slipped into a kneecap. At least you can cut it out. What can you do with the memories?

I'll be back at the chiropodist on Monday. I go every month to have the pus drained and the crater scrubbed. I never played soccer again, which was just as well for the spectators - I didn't look good in shorts after the war. But you count your blessings: three months with the nurses, a tidy pension and I missed D-day.

For you, Harry, the war was over.

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