After Work, The Pictures by William Webb

Author:William Webb
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: William Webb
Published: 2014-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Ken offered the cutting to Jim in the bar that evening.

“You keep it. Perhaps you could put it in your memoirs one day.”

“With you as a mate I’ll probably end up writing my memoirs in Strangeways or Dartmoor!” Jim re-read the translation and chuckled. “Have you ever done jankers here or does your friendship with the CO mean you’re fireproof?”

Ken shook his head. “No, I did seven days after coming back late from my first leave.”

“Not another World Fair was it?”

“No. I met a girl who was on her holidays in Clacton and overstayed my leave by two days until she went back home up north somewhere.”

“I gather you didn’t exchange addresses?”

“I told her I was on holiday too. I also told her I lived near Marylebone in London.”

“She believed that is a London accent?” asked Jim incredulously.

Ken shrugged. “I told you, she was from ‘oop north’. She wouldn’t have known the difference between my educated accent and that cockney twang of yours.”

“Thank you, mate. If ever I need a reference I’ll know where not to come. Anyway, how was jankers?”

“It was a piece of doddle. After the ten o’clock parade I would go back to the block, change into civvies and go out on the town.”

“What about signing out?”

“Didn’t do it. Climbed over the fence and picked up my car from the Kaffeehaus car park.”

“Climbed over the fence? With all that barbed wire? Bit dodgy, wasn’t it?”

Ken shook his head. “I didn’t actually climb the fence. There are trees around the camp that are so close to it one can climb them and drop to the other side. I did have a nasty moment when returning one night when a German civilian guard appeared when I was in the branches.”

“What? Those blokes in green uniforms with the dogs?”

“That’s them. I perched myself in the tree like some overgrown sparrow and waited for them to pass. Just my luck, the chap decides to stop for a smoke. I could smell the stinking tobacco from the tree. Then, all of a sudden, there is a resounding snap and the branch gave way beneath me.”

Jim winced at the thought.

“I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and as I lay there I heard the dog charging towards me! I just laid there petrified, with all the breath knocked out of me, as this slobbering great beast hovered above me.”

The other airman whistled. “Phew, rather you than me!”

“The thing sniffed me from head to toe and then just lost interest. It viewed me with such utter contempt I would not have been surprised if it had cocked its leg on me!”

Jim laughed at the thought. “Obviously trained to only bite Germans!”

“They must be. What annoyed me though, was the guard just called the dog and strolled off. He had definitely seen the dog approach me but he just left. I could have been seriously hurt.”

“He was probably fed up with finding drunken janker-wallahs every night” was the unsympathetic reply.

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Jim’s watch was on duty over Christmas but he was off for New Year’s Eve.

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