大象传媒

I was too young to fight and yet, as a young lad not yet in his teens, I and all the kids down our road were of the time and as such we felt worthy participants in the war.
Home was on the Surrey-Hampshire border in a village that was only a short route march away from the home of the British Army itself. Marching soldiers, rumbling tanks and the incessant crack of gunfire were normal everyday events in our village, so it is not surprising that our little gang adopted a lifestyle that mimicked all that was going on.
Despite it being wartime we had more freedom than today鈥檚 youngsters appear to have,and though the miles and miles of heather gorse and pines on the edge of our village were the practicing grounds for many of those destined to wade ashore in Normandy, there were few restraints on our use of the common. Today the same area is completely fenced off whereas in the 1940s our gang was free to roam the heathland. We built our dens there, went looking for flares that failed to ignite whilst stealing away with the miniature parachutes of those flares that had fired our catapults with destructive aggression, climbed trees and swung on ropes and unconsciously communed with nature all the while observing and imitating the soldiery at first hand. Now soldiers have to have weapons and to begin with a wooden rifle complete with nail sights and a loop of string was all our imagination needed, but as time went by the thirst for more realism brought sheath knives to the gang. Not I hasten to add to kill but merely to help manufacture our true weapon of war, the catapult. Slicing up old car innertubes and cutting beautifully symmetrical prongs from a tree called for a good sharp knife. And like the real soldiers with their rifles our skill with the catapult improved with the progess of the war. Compared to the sacrifices some children had to make during the war mine were few and far between. One I particularly remember was the handing over of some really treasured possessions for the benefit of the war effort. My school organised a scheme for collecting paper and books. According to how much each child contributed , he or she was given an army rank on a proper badge . This chance to lord it over my peers proved irresistible and over time I surreptitiously emptied our house of everything that even vaguely looked like paper and as a result has reached the dizzy height of 鈥淢ajor General鈥�. But the competition to become the first 鈥淔ield Marshal鈥� in my class was intense. Although I did achieve the top rank eventually it was not before I had sacrificed all of my best books and annuals. Not long after I realised what a terrible mistake I had made and another valuable lesson was learnt.

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