Random Memoirs 2

I awoke the following morning to the sound of a loud rustling noise, coming from the rear of the officer's quarters.
Looking out of my window in the general direction of the rubbish bins, I noticed that several small bags of leftover canteen pie crusts had been ripped open, their contents now strewn across the yard.
A large crow was having the devil's own job of trying to break one of the crusts, whilst over in the corner, the soggy Labrador was dry heaving after probably managing to down a crust in one gulp. He now wanted to get it out as quickly as possible.
This could only mean one thing. The manageress of the canteen had returned from her five day leave.

Captain Gwendolyn Unsightly-Horseposture (Miss) had been in charge of the section canteen for just over eighteen months, but had already proved herself to be an invaluable asset in the fight against the enemy.
Her now famous recipe for chicken and pomegranate au gratin had proved to be so demoralising, that it was immediately translated into French, and transmitted to their resistance fighters in the hope that it would be served to occupying soldiers in various backstreet cafes.
Unfortunately, owing to a lack of pomegranates in occupied France, the Maquis had decided to substitute the pomegranate with onion, thereby turning the recipe into one of the most appetising meals of the day.
Where she really made her mark though, was with her signature dish of Ham and gooseberry pie. Tests on the prototype pie quickly revealed, although the filling caused immediate and drastic vomiting, it was her unique recipe for pastry that raised some eyebrows.
Initial tests on the firing range showed that, when the pie was angled at 45 degrees towards the attacker, incoming munitions would not only be deflected upwards, but the targeted crust would somehow end up showing no signs of damage. A sort of self healing buffer, if you will.
It also proved to be completely waterproof, fireproof, acid resistant and non staining.

Small to family sized pies could sit there all day, deflecting bullet after bullet with no sign of damage, but when an artillery shell was aimed at one, it would be blown to smithereeens. The defensive pie obviously had to be scaled up accordingly.

Within a year, and after extensive testing and tweaking of the recipe, the entire southern coast of England was lined with gigantic pies, all facing out to sea at 45 degrees, waiting to repel the shells of the imminent invader.
Smaller, customised versions of the Horseposture pie were moulded into shape, painted in various regimental colours, and issued to crack forces of the British Army as a protective substitute for the now outdated soft cloth beret. Now our boys could be safe from sniper fire, whilst at the same time, maintain their roguishly fashionable appearance.

After the war, and with her then patented recipe, the formidable Gwendolyn went on to make a small fortune, selling a meat filled variety of head shaped pie, moulded to the shape of a small trilby. This fashionable headgear was very popular in the early 60's, and came to be known as the "pork pie" hat, which was rather a misnomer, as it was actually filled with a secret mixture involving beef and turkey.

The loud rustling continued as I watched the dog trying to regurgitate its crust, and eventually, a dishevelled looking old man emerged from the inside of one of the giant bins, eating what looked very much like one of yesterday's spam and strawberry sandwiches.

He was a hobo, or as they would say in America, a "lower spine", I believe.

Asking him to recite a small passage of Henry V, in order to confirm the fact that he was English and not some sort of Johnny Foreigner spy, he simply stuck two fingers up, took a large swig out of an earthenware cider flagon, told me to "go boil my 'ead", and sauntered off in the direction of the local pub. He was English alright. A true Englishman would never recite Shakespeare whilst wearing such shabby attire.

Satisfied that security had not been breached, I wished him good day and called for my batman, Private Backwater.

Private Vergil Backwater was, unusually, an American chappie, seconded in from their 95th Paratroop Regiment, for persistently refusing to gamble.

Apparently, so he told me, gambling is compulsory during waking hours in most of the American military, and one would quickly become unpopular if one refused to take part. His nose was broken in several places, namely Bognor Regis, Coltishall, Chipping Norton and an unknown place near Southampton, when he refused to bet his wages on who could drink the most warm beer (Bognor), who had the fastest snail (Coltishall), who would be the first to hit an officer ( C/Norton) and who could eat an entire plateful of the local fish and chips, including the crispy little burnt bits (unknown place adj. to S/Hampton).

He was warned on several occasions re. his uncooperative behaviour and refusal to carry the obligatory regimental pack of cards, and so jumped at the chance to come here, so as to avoid possible Court Martial.

"You called me, Bub?"

"Yes, Backwater (I'd long ago given up trying to get him to call me Sir), would you fetch me my vertically pressed trousers?, there's a good chap"

"You mean your pants?" he chewed.

"No, no, I have already donned my scorchproof pants, I now need my trousers to complete the necessary leg coverings."

He threw me a giant bar of chocolate, then strolled off in too much of a casual manner for my liking, singing some song about getting a line and a pole. I resolved to work on Backwater in the near future, and instill some discipline.

After stowing away the chocolate in my small cupboard, I had a quick look and realised that my drawers were now crammed full of the stuff. I therefore reached down inside my waistband, removed them all and stowed them away in the nearby wardrobe. I instantly regained free, unencumbered movement in both legs.

After dressing, and downing one of Backwater's very interesting mugs of tea, I strolled over to the canteen for breakfast, praying that Gwendolyn was not on duty. My mind was on something called Crawfish, for some inexplicable reason.

The path between the officer's quarters and the canteen had been bombed out the week before, owing to an experiment with a short fuse mole that had proven to be spectacularly successful.
As I slopped through the mud, I could smell bacon and eggs being incinerated. This didn't bode well.


The door creaked loudly as I entered the smoke filled canteen. I wiped my feet on the large mat and looked around, before walking towards the serving hatch. The middle aged cleaner, otherwise known as Corporal Gladys Cudlippe, was mopping the floor, snook on head, fag in mouth and scowl on face.

"Have you wiped your feet, Sir?" She shouted.

"Of course I have!" I shouted back.

"Then why are you trailing mud all over my newly mopped floor?"

"The mud is from my shoes" I replied "But I can assure you that my feet are impeccably clean"

The trail of mud followed me to the hatch, where I was issued with a standard army breakfast, consisting of two small slices of something that used to be bacon, a lump of charcoal that turned out to be a sausage, and a small scoop of yellowish white wallpaper paste, which smelled faintlly of sulphur and was supposed to be reconstituted dried egg powder, dissolved in cold water and heated to something approximating body temperature.


As I sat down to eat, my gaze wandered to the far end of the canteen, where Manageress Horseposture was talking to some of the survivors of her previous meal. A nurse was scurrying back and forth between them, setting up saline drips.

Bradshaw sat down next to me, glass of water in hand.

"Ahh, Bradshaw, how's the old back end? Y'think it can withstand a full day of decoding?"

"With fingers crossed and a trailing wind, I think it can, Sir. I took the goat purge just before bedtime, and, as a result, had a very successful corporeal expulsion at around 2am."

"I see. I wondered what the air raid siren was all about in the early hours." I chortled, "Not a Heinkel in sight, but sounds of muffled explosions coupled with the odd scream."

"Sorry about the screaming, Sir" he blushed "That bierwurst was deceptively peppery"


I was quietly proud of Bradshaw, in a not wishing to hug him in public sort of way. He was, in my mind, the epitome of all things British.
Coming from mixed parentage (one male, one female), he shrugged off life's disadvantages of bright ginger hair, pasty complexion and total lack of bicep, to become the mixed bathing champion of 1931. He tried again in 1932, this time, entering the competition as a male, but failed to even qualify for the second round of the competition.

Showing a talent for invention, he was almost expelled from Wapping Girl's Grammar at the age of fourteen, when he built a radio controlled, picture transmitting hedgehog which caused severe spike related wounds to the Gym mistress while she was taking a shower.

Upon leaving school, he attended The Royal Albert University for the cunningly inventive. Whilst there, he stunned the English speaking world with his invention of the pocket sized loudhailer, enabling the carrier to much more effectively shout loudly at non English speaking foreigners in order to help them better understand as to what was being communicated.

Shortly before the outbreak of war, the then highly regarded Bradshaw and several of his loudhailers had been instrumental in convincing the French to place over 500 fake Marlene Dietrichs in strategic places either side of the Maginot line, in an attempt to severely slow any possible German invasion, the theory being that large groups of invading soldiers would feel the compulsion to stop and have long, drawn out sentimental singing sessions around various campfires, thus giving the defending troops ample time to organise themselves.

Unfortunately, the loudhailers couldn't have been turned up loud enough, as the French misunderstood his instructions and placed the fake Marlene's on top of, and behind the Maginot and, as things turned out, the invading Germans ended up just avoiding the place altogether preferring to swoop round from either end. As a consequence, instead of several odd thousand choruses of "Underneath ze lamplight" being heard, lots of banging ensued, France fell and the B.E.F. received a bloody nose.
Yes, Bradshaw was proving to be an invaluable member of our team.




Having broken one of my four remaining teeth on a piece of bacon, I put down my knife and fork, wiped the blood from my lip and made my way with the hungry Bradshaw towards Lab "A". The Labrador had just received a fresh bucket of water over its head, ensuring adequate wetness for the day, and a neatly sliced up bierwurst was arranged on a plate, guarded by several excited looking boffins.

The remains of an undercooked flounder sat on another plate, surrounded by several empty beer bottles. The building had almost been bailed dry, and Major B, who had been there all night, had been given permission to downgrade his bailing speed from furious, to rather urgent. He looked tired, so I patted him on the back as a sign of encouragement and assured him that he only had about 200 gallons to go before he could toddle off to bed.

I went and reviewed the situation.

"Just one question" I asked, after reading through the message once more. "Why "deathly" when the first three letters were in fact D-E-I ?"

"Ah", said Arborbridge, picking out a fishbone from an upper right molar. "We thought you'd spot that, Sir. You see, "deithly" doesn't make sense. When we asked Bradshaw about it, he admitted that he had suffered an involuntary clench during the transmission of that letter, and the second "dot" should really have been a "dash", thereby making it an "a". To double check, we've consulted a German dictionary and can confirm that there is no deithly to be found. We've also drawn a blank using the O.E.D., Sir."

As Arborbridge spoke, I could see that Bradshaw had been placed in a dining chair and was being fed three slices of bierwurst, in strict numerical order, so as not to scramble the future message.
A formidable looking clandestine nurse was allowing him to have a small sip of water after each mouthful, and was listening to his abdomen with a stethoscope. A top secret Doctor stood in the background, stopwatch in hand. I decided to leave them to it.

"Give me a shout if anything comes in" I said to Arborbridge.

"Don't you mean if anything comes out, Sir?" he replied, packing away his fishing gear.

"Precisely" I smiled.