Before my father died I started to write down his tales about his life. The following story is based on one tale he told about when a friend of his shot a cow when they were on guard duty.
I was in bad with a bookie. We’d only been in Blackburn
for a month and I was two pounds, fourteen shillings and eleven pence in and it
was growing each day. The Captain had told me there was not a chance of any
advance on my pay and the others lads were as skint as I was, so borrowing was
out. In those days I kept the gambling well hid, they thought I’d lost it all
as they had chasing skirts in one of the two dance halls.
The bookie was called Maurice Blake, though you had to
call him Mr. Blake unless you wanted a bunch of fives from the gorilla that
always accompanied him. Anyway this Blakey was well dressed in a flashy sort of
way, like a Yank, big lapels, gold tie pin and a gold tooth too, still have you
ever seen a poor bookie? I’d gone to see him as I’d got a cert, Walpole in the
2.15 at Weatherby.
“No more credit Billy” he told me, wagging his finger in
that annoying way. I read I the paper the next day that the bloody thing romped
home at thirteen to one. That would have nearly got me out of the hole.
I went to speak but he wagged his finger again. “I hear
your lots being moved” he continued. Talk about loose lips sinking ships, he
knew before the Captain did. I’d been half hoping that we’d move before Blakey
got wind of it and that would solve the problem for me as long as I didn’t come
back to Blackburn in the near future, and there was precious little chance I’d
want to do that.
“Saturday is what I’m hearing Billy. Now you’ll want to
settle up before you go, you being a gentleman and all.” He pointed at the
gorilla and continued before I could comment: “Arthur, here will be around on
Friday morning, early like, to collect. One way or the other Billy, you
understand?”
I nodded thinking “Its Wednesday now, not much time and
I’ve got guard duty the next two nights”, but I replied “Aye Mr. Blake I
understand, till Friday then”. As I walked back to the house where we’d been billeted
I ran through my options. It was a requisitioned detached house, next to the
fuse factory we’d been sent there to guard. The factory had been turned over to
munitions production at the start of the war.
Back then in the autumn of ’39, since “the balloon went
up” as they used to say we’d been on guard duty somewhere or other. First it
had been the Manchester Ship Canal, then the Vanguard Fuse Works on the
outskirts of Blackburn. I’d been in the T.A.s as had all my unit and we’d been
called up just before war was declared.
“How am going to swing this?” I thought, I couldn’t see
any way forward, there was nothing I could sell or pawn, nothing I could half
inch for that matter. I wasn’t above that in those days, times were tight,
usually of my own making thanks to poor decisions on the horses. The house we
were billeted in had been emptied out by the owners before we got there, otherwise
I’d have been offering Blakey whatever I could to get him off my back. The army
kept lists of everything, and it all had to be accounted for, there would be no
salvation from that angle.
Added to this I was going to be spending the majority of
my time until Friday morning standing with my back to the factory facing a
field full of cows. As if Jerry paratroopers were going to drop from the
heavens and over run Blackburn.
So before I know it its Thursday night and I’m on guard
duty. The night was as black as the gates of hell. It was still early on in the
war and I had not got used to the blackout, I always was a townie and liked the
lights. So there I am facing this field full of cows, like I said the fuse
works was at the edge of the town, isolated really and a damn good job it was
for what I had in mind.
We had heard that the following Monday the factory would
be running three shifts instead of the early and late shifts they had as a fuse
factory. I had a plan but I’d decided to wait until it was past two o’clock and
hopefully the place would be dead quiet. Waiting that’s what we did most of the
time I was in the army, waited, it was better than the other times when we were
not waiting but up to our necks in the noise and the chaos. So it gets past two
in the morning and I’d already decided on which one it was to be, a big light
coloured bugger, which happened to be the nearest to me. I’d always been a good
shot, a natural, the sergeant had said. It was a talent that came in useful
that night I can tell you.
I was unsure which I was the more conscious of the sound
of the rifle or the muzzle flash which lit up the whole field. The cow did not
know what had hit it, then there was the sound of several hundred weight of
beef hitting the grass.
“Bloody hell Billy what’ve you done?” says Charlie as he
comes running around the side of the factory wall.
“I heard a noise Charlie, so I challenged it and when I
got no answer I shot it, just like it says in the regulations.” As I spoke I
tried to be all shock and surprise.
We walked across the field towards the dead cow. Up to
this point I’d only shot at targets and I was not really prepared for the mess
a bullet could make of flesh. I’d hit the beast in the head, its skull was so
thick the bullet stayed there. What no one ever tells you is that when you fire
at a living thing there’s the blood that spurts from the creature, not like in
the movies I can tell you. Thankfully for us the ground was all churned over by
the cows hooves and it was soon lost in the mud.
“Christ you’ve hit one Billy! Too good a shot, that’s
your trouble.” He paused before continuing “What are we going to do now? We’ll
be for it.”
I was relieved that this had become our problem and not
simply stayed mine.
“Did anyone else here the shot do you think Charlie?”
He shook his head “I don’t think so Billy there’s only us
here and I think the sound will have travelled over the fields rather than
towards the town. I nodded that was how I had figured it the previous night
when we’d been on duty. As I said when you are waiting you have plenty of time
to figure out the odds.
“Right Charlie” I said “this is what we are going to do.”
Charlie never knew the truth. He’d laugh about it at
times when we were guarding the Orkneys the next spring and summer, as we flew
big box kites to foil the Jerry’s airplanes or built huts to house convalescing
soldiers. He never worked out what I had done, but then nobody did.
It had happened like this, I was despondent after meeting
Blakey and I’d stopped off at a pub and there‘d got chatting with this bloke
who turned out to be a butcher, Jenkins and Son. He was the son, only the
business wasn’t doing as well as it could, I commiserated with him there, I
wasn’t doing as well as I could either.
I told him I might be in a position to put something his
way quiet like, unofficial like, just one man to another. He got the drift and
we agreed a price that was mutually acceptable. I told him to get his van over to the factory
around three in the morning and we could do business.
So after leaving Charlie with the dead cow I had met
Jenkins as arranged and we had driven to the side of the factory and between
the three of us we dragged the carcass across the ground and into the back of
his van. It was hard work I can tell you, even after Charlie came up with the idea
of using a flat bed trolley that was kept by the gates for loading deliveries.
Still we were young and fit and we managed, especially as there would have been
a charge waiting for both us the following morning if we had not got rid of the
evidence.
Jenkins palmed me two five pound notes as we shook hands,
they were the old sort in those days, the big ones that were the size of a
pocket handkerchief. Those notes got me out of the hole and left me some cash
to spare. I could not decide whether Arthur the ape man was sad or not when I
produced the cash, I got the feeling he would have preferred to have taken it
out of my hide.
I was relieved when he had gone and that night I treated
the lads to a drink, a couple of bottles of whisky, you could still buy it relatively
easily at that time, it was later in the war that it was scarce. The trouble
was that our game of parlour cricket ended up with us breaking the gas fitting
and we had to call out the police who in turn called out the gas board to fix
it. The Captain was not well pleased with that, still we were leaving that
morning and that made it easier.
It was not until after the war that I finally gave up the
gambling, it was a mugs game after all, I’d always known that but found it
difficult to stop. Given all that had happened over those six years I reckoned
I’d used up my share of luck.
That's a great story! Even more so as it was based on a real one.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It was only when I was writing up his stories after he had died that I got to reflecting on his mate who had shot a cow on guard duty. He did sell it to a butcher. The narrator's motives are made up but the background came from my dad. It had to be a put up job don't you think? I don't believe he just happened to kill a cow and find a butcher to take it off his hands. Too convenient a happening for fiction!
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