Bent by Joe Thomas

Bent by Joe Thomas

Author:Joe Thomas [Thomas, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911350736
Publisher: Arcadia Books
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00


Tanky

A few years after my grandad passed on, I started to understand the magnitude of what he’d done — what they’d done. I’d look at a blue photo album he put together. It records their days training in Scotland, blowing up road blocks in France, helping liberate Norway, passing through the rubble of Hamburg in 1945, and the lazy days immediately after: swimming, sunbathing, these impossibly young-looking, fit-looking, relaxed-looking lads. Every time I look at this blue photo album, I well up a touch, have a bit of a cry. Sometimes it's about knowing how much older I am now than they were then. I’ve never really understood why I feel it, but there's an inadequacy that pops up too, as if how dare I have any problems in the face of what they did. But I know my grandad wouldn’t wish some of what he saw, and did, on his worst enemy — on his actual enemy, in fact - that he’d do anything for me and my brother never to have to do what he did.

He always said that SAS was knowing the Germans were there - and knowing they didn’t know you were. That was the advantage of being elite. Makes sense.

In that blue photo album, there's a snap of two young, muscular fellas holding up a Nazi flag, looking at it quizzically, both got Woodbines in their gobs. It's in Hamburg. There are ruins all around them.

They’re standing in front of a jeep, and on the front of the jeep's spare tyre which sits on the grill in front of the engine, is painted, in white, the words:

Little Tanky

The lad on the right is grinning, his beret at a jaunty angle, I suppose is how you’d describe it. His short sleeves are rolled up, better to accentuate his biceps, his forearms. The lad to the left is dressed more neatly, hand on hip, proudly bearing this Nazi flag. My grandad has written their names under the photo:

Cas Carpenter and Tanky Challenor

There's a bunch of photos of lads lounging around in jeeps in Hamburg, mocking the flags they’ve pilfered, or examining them, or simply indifferent to them, the flags just there, in the shot, barely noticeable, and the lads are simply enjoying a rest and a smoke. Each photo is inscribed:

Freddie Baines and Will Fyffe

Pouch Maybury and ‘Umbriago’

Larry Brownlee and Paddy McCann

Sammy Harrison and Jake Manders

Cas Carpenter and Tanky Challenor

My eye always strays to the photo of Tanky - the lunatic looks about twelve years old. And there he is, with his jeep, his pride and joy: Little Tanky.



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