Pond Life and Other Stories by Sam Kates

Author:Sam Kates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Huw Griffiths T/A Sam Kates

When I Was Young

When I was young, the world was a very different place: neighbourly, less frantic, gentler, yet at the same time harsher and more intolerant.

When I was young, I fought in a war that should have ended all wars, though they said that about the first one, too.

When I was young, I did something that helped shape the future.

And all I did was duck.

* * *

May 1940. I had barely turned nineteen and seen things that today’s thirty-year-olds would have difficulty even imagining.

I was part of the British Expeditionary Force sent to the continent to protect France from the threat of Hitler. When Belgium surrendered to Germany, Hitler’s blitzkrieg swept into France like a black tidal wave, sweeping all before it.

We fled in tatters. Thousands of us, British and French, made it to the beaches of Dunkirk. There we cowered, grown men reduced to scrabbling like rabbits, waiting to be finished by the advancing German armies or the circling Luftwaffe. We spat out mouthful after mouthful of sand as Stukas completed their sweeps. We scrambled into fresh, flesh-strewn craters, praying that lightning wouldn’t strike in the same place twice.

It was not long after the first flotilla of fishing smacks and pleasure yachts appeared defiantly over the horizon, and hope dared to creep into our hearts, that I saw him. Or, rather, heard him.

In the confusion of screaming planes, falling bombs and flying sand, I dived into a shallow crater, only vaguely aware that a beige-clad figure already occupied it. I thrust my face into the sand, hands clasped around my head. As the noise of engines receded and I realised that I had lived through another attack, I became aware of the muttering.

“Gonna kill him. Gonna kill him. Gonna kill him…” It sounded like a mantra in a coarse cockney undertone.

“Go AWOL. Get back to the East End. Who the bleeding ’ell will find me there? Gonna kill him. Gonna kill him…”

I raised my head from the sand. To my left lay a soldier, face down, hands wrapped tightly around his helmetless head. Seemingly unaware of my presence, he continued his monologue.

“Gonna kill him… flippin’ great leader, my foot. Gonna kill him. Do the country a favour. Bleedin’ Churchill—”

“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Oi, you! Shut up!”

His hands dropped away as his head jerked up. He glanced wildly around before noticing me.

“Talkin’ to me, mate?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Whatever else I was about to say died in my throat, my outrage forgotten. It was his eyes. Large and round and so deep a shade of brown they were almost black. And behind them lay something that unsettled me badly. I had seen madness brought on by extremes of terror and suffering too many times not to recognise it. But the madness that dwelt within him was different. It was deep-rooted, shifting and sly. Malevolent.

His eyes widened as his gaze settled on me, revealing his insanity even more clearly. After all I had been through, all the horror I had witnessed, this was by far the most scared I had ever been.

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