大象传媒

THE TALE OF TWO PISTOLS, chapter one.
by
IanCDSmith

France was falling and the evacuation at Dunkirk was in its closing stages. Myself, a 2/Lt RASC of little standing and no experience had the job one fine morning, and weren't all mornings fine in that summer of 1940?,of sorting a large assortment of weapons taken from civilian refugees who somehow had managed. to keep just ahead of the advancing Germans and scramble aboard a rescue boat at Dunkirk.
The weapons were all types, sizes, shapes, colours, and conditions. There was even a heavy machine gun, though it was hard to imagine who had manhandled that weight on to a rescue boat when the rescued were encouraged to board with the absolute minimum ,maybe the skipper wanted it for defense against the Stukas, though in truth it was more suited to a concrete base than the deck of a of a yacht. There were pistols, revolvers, rifles, Tommy guns, shot guns, six shooter's, as favoured in Westerns and tiny pistols with inlaid ivory grips designed for ladies hand bags, all these together with loose ammunition of all and every kind. The whole were in one damp and rapidly rusting pile, still smelling strongly of their time in the English Channel.
To assist me in the work I was given the services of a Belgian who had also fled his country, I was told he was an expert in small arms and with was him was his friend, who he told me in very broken English "knows about guns boom,boom". The object was to sort guns and ammunition into their types and sizes.
Pierre, the Arms Expert from Belgium and his friend set about sorting the various armaments with considerable enthusiasm. One would seize a weapon, decide according to genus to which bench it belonged and either throw it amongst its mates or if its home was too far away then to throw it to the other man for onward transmission. I had shortly left the Royal Military College at Sandhurst where there were very clear and strictly enforced orders for dealing with weapons of any sort and the antics of our Expert and his friend certainly formed no part of them.
"Oi" I shouted and again "oi,oi" my Sandhurst education though detailed in so many things did not say how an Officer and a Gentleman should correctly address a couple of maniacs tossing small arms as children would a tennis ball. 1t was my final"Oi that did it, that was the signal they needed; it was though they were jugglers before they became experts in small arms-Pierre, already holding one pistol by inserting his finger in the trigger guard and giving it a whirl shouted to his mate for another weapon, and matey joining in the spirit of the thing threw him not one but two, undismayed Pierre with a flick of his wrist had these two in the air and as one descended somehow projected the one on his finger so that at any one time there were two potentially lethal weapons in the air.
For God's sake stop it" I yelled.! must have shouted very loudly, at Sandhurst one was taught to shout when drilling squads at the other end of the enormous parade ground, because they stopped instantly, so instantly that the weapons in the air at the time crashed noisily on to the concrete to the floor
1 explained in as simple terms as possible the dire probabilities that would follow if they persisted in treating sensitive and damaged weapons in such a cavalier fashion.; to illustrate this I picked up a long barreled competition revolver from whose cylinder I could just see the rims of cartridges. The pistol was slimy and had a salty smell, proudly using all the approved Sandhurst safety drills I managed to unload it, and told Pierre and his friend that was how it had to be in future.
Pierre sucked his teeth, grinned and nodded, his friend just nodded. The sorting started and continued in a much safer way.
Suddenly Pierre sighted some special treasure, I think it was one of those petite .22 automatics designed not to cause an unsightly bulge in a ladies evening bag, it could also be discreetly hidden about the female form.
All restraint thrown aside he pounced, and with a loud "ole" or what ever they say in the circus ( because I was convinced that at one time he had been a circus juggler) he became once more the juggler, and with a flick of the wrist the pistol was in the air only to be caught in the other hand and sent skyways again, when it came down for the second time there was shot and his friend fell forward, dead, shot through the heart,
The shot was heard outside and soon officers much senior to me, and growing more senior and more important with every new arrival. I was told to go the mess not to worry to go and have a drink. It seemed a sensible suggestion and I stole quietly away. As I was leaving the shed an elderly Major a distinguished QC in civilian life, kindly took me by the arm, and gave it as his considered opinion that as both participants were Belgian civilians who had entered this country without benefit of customs or passport procedures thee shooting was entirely their own fault if they chose to ignore the most elementary rules of weapon training, or on the other hand if they were employees of the Belgian Government it was that governments responsibility.
In the mess that lunchtime the talk was only of the likely consequences of the shooting.1 sat in the ante room, all the seats in the bar were pinched for senior officers .1 don鈥檛 think that they deliberately ignored me, after all I was a principal in the drama, but gathered in the mess at that time were a great many experienced men, Regular Reserve officers recalled after years of active service, Territorial Army Officers from various civilian life and some specially commissioned because of their -particular expertise. There seemed to be a whole crowd of them that morning and they all gave their opinions as to the likely outcome of the morning's events, however varied these opinions they all came to the grim conclusion that it all spelt trouble with a capital T, all could see endless Courts of Inquiry, even Courts Martial, Coroners courts the lot.
I suppose I should have been worried, but 1 don鈥檛 think 1 was, because I was thrilled on two counts; I had seen my first shooting and subsequent corpse and not been too upset and I had seen a short while before on the notice board a very interesting item. It asked for volunteers for special duties, applicants should be fit, able to swim, enjoy physical games and want adventure. I had put my name down, not thinking I would have any chance against those from smarter units than the RASC but much to my surprise I was interviewed and, blow me, accepted in what was then the top secret unit namely, 2 Commando eventually to become the Parachute regiment. The incident happened whilst I was waiting for my official posting to come through .I will tell of the a bit later ,how my new acceptance into 2 Commando served me hilariously well.
But in spite of all the dire predictions of the experts in army protocol gathered in the mess that lunch time, I never heard another word about the fatal incident, nor did I ever learn the name of the victim or Pierre's surname .

End of Chapter One.
Chapter Two is headed:
Tale of Two Pistols, Part Two by IanCDSmith

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