Open Writing

A stunned silence fell over the London scene for a few moments, a silence broken only by spasmodic outbursts of violent flatulence from the old soldiers. Then there was another commotion, as a gaggle of NCOs ran about waving their arms in the air, flashing torches and yelling, "Cease fire! Cease fire!", which was all a bit pointless as there was nothing left to fire anyway, unless we ran off to bring more rockets, and nobody seemed particularly anxious to do that.

Inevitably, they descended on Charlie Troop to discover who was the military genius who started it all. They soon pinpointed Projector No. 13, and its two criminal miscreants.

Complaints flooded in very promptly from the hotel managements, the police, the ARP, all and sundry. A Fleet Street night editor even phoned to ask if it were true that Hyde Park had been blown up, while fire watchers reported a rocket in vertical position, flying horizontally, leaving a trail of sparks across the dome of the Albert Hall and wobbling along like a pregnant duck.

Our sentry, heavily armed with a .303 Lee Enfield rifle and a .25 pint hip flask (now half empty), confirmed this. He said that he saw it when he was on his knees praying, just before his pince-nez fell off. He thought it was a manifestation of God's wrath and the end of the world.

At this stage, two volunteer Dads stepped forward as one man, to support him in his story and they did so very ably too; one under each armpit as his knees sagged and gave way (hip flask now completely empty, even the fumes sucked out). As his chin dropped, his pince-nez started to slide down his nose, hesitated, then took the plunge and dropped off. They would have fallen had not another Dad dived down and, landing on his beer belly, caught them before they hit the floor. His reward was a round of admiring applause from the other Dads, together with the bonus of a hernia for his effort.

Our Commanding Officer acted very responsibly over the whole military action and informed the Bomb Disposal Squad of the pregnant-duck rocket and that it was probably about to land somewhere in the greater London area, which all the Dads agreed was very helpful. At the same time he informed Bomb Disposal of the two rockets somewhere at the bottom of the Serpentine Lake, in case they wanted to retrieve them.

Bomb Disposal were very rude, we all thought. They said that, including the free home delivery of two unfused rockets, three incidents from Dad's Army in as many minutes were more than they could stand in one night. We were giving them as much trouble as the bloody Luftwaffe. They then suggested that we could retrieve the damned things from the Serpentine Lake ourselves, and that their advice on the best way to start was for all Dad's Army to go jump in the lake and look for them.

The rockets that we fired off were as nothing compared with the 'rocket' Sam and I received later. We were marched off to the Command Post. Sam said, "Yer know, Sandy.." (In wartime there was a comedian called 'Sandy Powell': it was the fate of many Powells in the Services to be dubbed 'Sandy'. Sam soon nicknamed me as such.) "Yer know, Sandy, gaw blimey, they might make yer a sergeant and me a bombadier or somethin', fer breakin' th' bleedin' hoodoo, or maybe we'll get medals."

Then after a moment, he burst out laughing and added, "Or maybe they'll hang us in th' bloody Tower of London." Sam, a typical cockney, was completely irrepressible and he broke into loud guffaws of contagious laughter in which I joined. So it was that the two culprits, instead of arriving at the Command Post with shivering trepidation, arrived bellowing with laughter, that is, until the Corporal, stifling his own mirth, put a stop to it.

Entering the Command Post, or, rather, being marched into the Command Post, there was a large welcoming committee. As far as I could see, out of the comer of my eye, only Winston Churchill was absent. It was no ordinary harangue we collected, indeed, nothing but the best and delivered personally by a brass hat, with red tabs stuck all over him, no less than a Brigadier.

He pounded up and down the concrete floor in front of us, whacking his overweight thighs with his swagger stick, to such an extent that there could not have been any dust left in his pants, while from the rear he looked like a prize Berkshire pig in boots and gaiters. He covered a lot of ground, not only of the concrete but also of my ancestral tree, casting grave doubts in my mind as to whether Dad really was my sire.

We were eventually released when he stormed out of the building yelling, "Reduce them both to the ranks! Reduce them both to the ranks!", which mystified us since we were already in the ranks.

Sam observed, "No medals, Sandy, but still, we ain't in th' bleedin', bloody Tower neither. Let's go and 'ave a beer in the NAAFI. You can pay since you was to blame."

"Me to blame?" I queried. "Me to blame? Sam, if you hadn't loaded the rockets in the first place, we'd have been all right. I reckon you pay."

Neither of us paid. Dawn was breaking and the NAAFI had shut hours ago, yesterday in fact.

There were no confirmations that we shot anything down that night, apart from the five chimney pots on the Cumberland Hotel, but we reckoned we did. It was surely no coincidence that, suddenly, there was not another air raid on London for four nights. The authorities were puzzled, but to us it was obvious that the few, nerve-shattered, Luftwaffe pilots that survived our Dad's Army onslaught, had staggered back to base with terrifying reports of a horrifying, deadly, new secret weapon, a hellish weapon from which there was no escape because it fired in ail directions at once.

The following week, Sergeant Walters singled me out in the canteen.

"What'll you have, Sandy?"

"Mild and bitter thanks, Sergeant."

"Two halves of mild and bitter please, Miss."

We raised our beer mugs in salute. For a few seconds there was a silence broken by that tender rustle as lips meet foam and the satisfied gulping of Adam's apples.

"Have another, Sergeant Walters?"

"Yes, but this one's on me."

I was puzzled. "But what about the first one, then?"

"Ah, that was from our Commanding Officer."

"What? The CO.?"

Sergeant Walters ignored my query. "Listen, Sandy," he continued, "Last week when you fired against orders, did you know that we could have shot down one of our own night fighters in the area?"

"Hell's bells! No, of course I didn't. That's not funny."

"No! It's not. So, just you remember, the next time you hear the order 'Stand Down', you obey it and don't try and win the ruddy war all on your own. Understand?"

"Yes. I am sorry, very sorry, Sergeant Walters. I'll be damned sure it doesn't happen again." I paused, "But tell me, how come, after all that, the CO has stood me a beer?"

Sergeant Walters grinned, "Well, it's thanks to you we broke the hoodoo. We actually fired for once. So, you see, the first beer was from the Commanding Officer, with thanks. The next one is from me, likewise. Hang on, though; I'd better call Sam, your partner in crime, to join in too."

We both laughed.