Boys will be boys

My comrade in arms and I crawled slowly and silently up the hill to the ridge where we could get a better view of the enemy enforcement’s and decide our battle plan. What we saw when we got there chilled us to the bone, ten thousand or more were massed in the valley below and more reinforcements were coming in from the east.

I looked across at my comrade and saw fear in his eyes. He swallowed and pulled his gun closer to him, "what are we gonna do" he said his voice wavering. Do! do! We are gonna charge them solder that's what we are gonna do. "But we are outnumbered sarg, we don't stand a chance". "Element of surprise" I said "works every time" he was right we didn't stand a chance, But British soldier's are the best soldier's in the world and I knew we were more than a match for a couple of thousand baddies. In any case we would take as many as we could with us. "How much ammo you got left" I growled at him. “A hundred bullicks and my knife” he replied trying not to look scared.

Bullicks were what my brother and I called bullets, well we were only eight and six years old at the time and playing a game we played every time we visited our Grandmothers house. A patch of waste ground just around the corner from where she lived served as our battlefield and usually guns made from wood were our weapons of choice.

This particular week it had been my birthday and my present was a Canadian mounted policeman’s gun, it had a lanyard that connected it to the holster so it couldn’t be lost or easily taken from me by baddies. To stop my brother from crying she had bought him a rubber knife. I was rather enamoured with the knife and proposed a swap with the gun to my brother who immediately snatched it from my hand and nearly pulled me over (Remember the lanyard) it was my turn to cry. The result of this confusion was that my Mother bought us both a Mountie gun and a knife each. Thus we were armed to the teeth for our latest war game.

Before going over the top as they do in all good war films, we lobbed a couple of pretend grenades (stones) in the direction of the enemy then jumped up guns in hand howling our war cries and firing as we ran. We must have looked a frightening sight especially as my Brother had his knife between his teeth pirate style, however it wasn’t enough to scare the four bigger boys on the other side of the hill whom we hadn’t seen when we first reconnoitred the area.

One of the boys had a small patch of blood over his eye where one of our pretend grenades had hit him, he held the offending stone in his hand and for a moment I thought it was going to be returned to me at speed.
The enemy advanced toward us enquiring in a menacing way as to who had thrown the stone, I did the only thing I could, pointed at my Brother and said “it was im” He looked at me in that Judas sort of fashion but directed his reply at the baddies. “So what you gonna do about it”.

My heart sank, they were bigger than we were, there were more of them and at that time I was going through my coward period. I desperately tried to think of something to placate the awoken tiger but before I could my Brother shouted “charfff” (remember he had the knife in his mouth) and ran up to the biggest boy firing as he ran. The sound of the gun caps going of which whilst we were playing had sounded like real gunfire to me, now sounded rather thin and inadequate. Not so my Brother who fleet of foot, holstered his empty gun, retrieved the knife from his mouth and still running plunged the rubber blade into the belly of the big boy.

This had the effect of knocking him flat on his back; the other boys completely surprised by this show of ferocity fled leaving their stricken comrade to his fate. He genuinely thought he had been knifed because clutching his belly he scattered backward on all fours and made good his escape. I managed to recover my composure thankful that the baddies had not managed to exact any retribution for the thrown stone and looking at my brother said “well done soldier, you passed the test, from now on you are promoted to commando”

He smiled and said “Just doing my job Sir, you would have done the same for me”. He was a kind thoughtful boy, and now he is a kind thoughtful man.