大象传媒

It was Summer of 1941 in the idyllic countryside of Shropshire.
In the little village of Little Wenlock, us four boys wandered about like the old men of 'Last of the Summer Wine. We knew that the local quarry was being worked by Italian P.O.Ws, so we walked down to see what was going on. The Italians were an idle lot, six of them were pushing a tub loaded with stone. We laughed and shouted that it only two English men to push that load (In fact two years later it only took one German P.O.W to push the same load).
Then we had an idea, if we crept down into the quarry, we could sabotage the tubs, pulling out the axle split pins would cause the wheels to come off. Thus they would have to pick all the stone up that fell out.
We did have great fun when we saw the tubs come off the rails, and we could throw small stones at them while they re-loaded the tub.
Later young John Marsden came and told us that he had learnt some swear words in Italian. So we carefully practised these swear words.
As the P.O.Ws were being marched back to their camp, we stood on the bridge shouting "Via La Italia".
The P.O.Ws marched off laughing. We couldn't understand why!

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