Stories

Mary Smith sighed as she prepared her meagre evening meal. Bloody rationing… As if life were not miserable enough, what with the bombing, people going away, close friends and acquaintances wiped out overnight with no chance to say goodbye properly; I mean, you just...

My friend Lee Harper was a Signaller undertaking a 2 week arduous ‘cadre’ course on the cold Catterick training area that anybody who has served there knows is rather cold in January. Lee, along with myself and 30 or so other young Royal Signals soldiers were trying...

Mark and John lived just round the corner from each other in London, with their parents. Both families had struggled a bit to afford it, but they had been able to give their sons a good education. In fact, Mark and John had been best friends since they were at Prep...

His name was Alfred Hughes. There was a lot about him in the paper that week. They called him the Hastings Hero. He not only saved my life, but apparently he then ran straight into the hotel and dashed inside. If you look carefully at the helmet you can see where the...

How am I still enthralled by this place? After how long? Since I broke the watch Noriko gave me, I can’t tell the hour of the day let alone the year. But its been at least twenty five monsoons from when I first started counting. Five since Ichiro died, an old man at...

When I was a child my mother told me it was imperative I always did what an adult told me to do, so I always obeyed. My actions now haunt me, engulfing everything in their path like a gigantic wave eating a tiny boat. Looking at my reflection within the mirror, I see...

Even I was shocked how bad it was. I trudged through the early-summer Ayrshire rain with the school-report. My fourteen year-old spirits lifted on seeing Grandpa Tom's red Jaguar three-point-four in front of the house. My mother read in silence. After Grandpa read it,...

The cold steel doors slammed closed again. I distinctly remember thinking that night that it didn’t seem like a moment since I had locked up the night before. This was always the case when living by routines and, more so perhaps, a sign of age. I double-checked every...

( The Falklands 1982 ) We'd tabbed around the back of Mount Kent,passing the mortar positions. Some of the guys on the mortar line, had broken their ankles. This was due to the boggy ground, and the inability to get the mortars to bed in properly. So they'd stood on...

There was a polite knock on the office door. The Naval Lieutenant Commander looked up from his paperwork and called out 'Come in!' A smartly dressed WREN opened the door and stood in the doorway. 'Chief Petty Officer Bickerell to see you, sir.' 'Oh yeh, ask him to...

As the years pass by, I sit in corners dark and safe Not the young carefree man of yesterday, but a lost and lonely grey man hopelessly drowning in my own thoughts, living with the knowledge of unchangeable yesterdays. I was so much but it means so little to so many...

My mother was an actress, dancer and singer on the West End stage in London. She usually performed in musical comedies which were very popular in those days. This was an era before the invention of radio, television, movies etc. Everybody would go to the theatre. My...

( Two years in Pakistan ) During my last few weeks in Calcutta, I received my embarkation orders to proceed back to the UK for demobilization. So I went through a period, once again of bidding farwell to all my many friends that I had made in Calcutta. Sir David Ezra...

Sports Notice On Thursday next there will be a cricket match against the RASC depot The team and order of batting and of bowling will be as usual. On completion of the match: bats, pads, wickets and bails are to be taken to the QM store, balls to the RSM.

Michael Thorne could spend all summer listening to the sounds of The Doors and The Stones through the tinny speakers, the basslines reverberating under his feet and through his body. Every so often, a chant would rise above Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison, the voices of...

It had been 4 years to the day since Robert had left to fight in Iraq. Jennifer felt a wave of emotions rush through her as she attached the balloons to the ceiling. She could almost feel the day he had left as if it were yesterday, not knowing when or whether she...

She opened her eyes as the dawn was crawling into the room through the badly-fitted wooden planks replacing now the broken window panes. She felt her husband’s warm breath on her shoulder and remained still and quiet like the red petals entangled in her long black...

My heart, my brain, my life stopped the moment the words came from his mouth. “The Army? Jake, you can’t be serious,” my said mother in disbelief. Though she said nothing I knew her thoughts, I could see them in her eyes. The worry in her eyes mirrored my own. “I’ve...

My back was aching, I was unbearably cold and I was sure my feet had lost all sensation, yet I refused to move. Moving would make it real. I looked again at the place where she had dropped. Just two hundred and thirteen minutes ago she had dropped there. Those first...

The town was dead. Like the air-con in my old Buick. In that Alabama heat it seemed my brain might swell and burst out of my hot skull, so I pulled up at a MacDonald’s near the edge of the small town and got me an iced Coke to put out the fire in my brain. An old...

Violet was sitting at the kitchen table, totally absorbed in her book. Before her, on the table, was a cold cup of tea and a half-eaten biscuit. Her sister, Daphne, called out from her arm-chair throne in the sitting room: “Violet, are you going to just sit around all...

I remember running from the silence of the village to the silence of the fields; a small child running for help, running away from what he’d seen in the village. I remember stopping in the fields, held back by the smell of death. It’s still there, that smell, etched...

Out there; they will come over the far horizon. The great hordes will come. And we need to watch for them, here in the watchtower. Do I want to die? says Lawrence--No, of course I don't want to die, but I figure if I'm smart I won't. Now, I'm not saying only the dumb...

Awakened by the stillness of the mother of dawn from the languorous valley of dreams, Charles stretched in his tent, rose to his feet, crouched through the flap to breathe in the morning-cooled air and put a pot of coffee on to start his day. Nothing was better than...

“And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and See.” Revelations 6.1 In the last days of the War, we knew that their days were numbered. Our Guards were mainly gone, the only ones...

High in the upper atmosphere the Mosquito flew… like a slingshot launched from England towards the heart of Germany. These airplanes flew alone and were immune to the dangers of the wartime night skies. The anti aircraft guns and the night fighters could not reach...

This river too was frozen solid like all the others we had crossed…but now the men were tired and cold. A thousand little fires sprang up beside the river with men pushing and shoving to get close. It didn’t help the frostbitten faces and smarting eyes. My lord had...

Estaires. Northern France 1915 Exhumed through French mud, In fear laced fascination she stared at a dead hand. Wired in rusted barb and stained in British blood, in defiance a curled skeletal finger cloaked in grey skin, beckoned from its decomposing grip. ‘A grim...

‘Was that nice, Arthur? Did you enjoy it?’ Molly was just being her usual chatty self and didn’t expect an answer. She scraped the remains of Arthur’s half-finished breakfast onto one plate, piling the rest of the plates and cutlery together on the tray that she’d...

So at last it was over, the war in Europe. Europe was finally free and Ted as he had done for the last four years, adjusted his cracked tatty cap, then after checking the pockets of his leather jerkin he shook the worn smooth reins as a signal for Ed to start pulling...

No Man’s Land Forward For all those who gaze in peace toward the night sky, I must recall, for soon it will be too late, a simple yet timeless story where Hell met Earth and ordinary people engaged in selfless acts of sacrifice. In the maelstroms and the furnaces,...

James turned the green stone over between his fingers. His chest boiled to a wound inflicted from the sword of a French Knight. Blood bubbled freely from its surface. The stump of his right arm, secured in a tourniquet bled dark clots into dirty rags used to dress it....

Wagons Ho!, Having just been formed into an armoured division entailed a lot of training for the Guards Brigade, which were of course mostly infantry. Those chosen to be equipped with tanks , departed for special training in mechanics, and gunnery. All very exciting...

The young man strolled along the Hastings seafront. Daylight was fading and the breeze from the sea was becoming cold. He turned away from the promenade and crossed the road. He was going to meet his girlfriend in the Bamboo Bar. As he walked along the bottom of...

“I would like to introduce you to my son Felix” translated Sergio, my travel companion and interpreter from the local dialect to English. He was speaking on behalf of the youngish looking father who had just introduced himself as George. Standing in a remote village...

The Holocaust Adara clutched her little brother Mica as she limped and stumbled on a jagged rock that tore a hole in her two sizes too small worthless shoe. She cried out in pain but couldn’t stop now. She’d come too far! Thoughts about her hometown were running...

George looked out through the window of the dining room at the rain that poured relentlessly. He sat with his arms rested on the table next to the carefully laid out cutlery. Every other minute Georges twitch knocked the cutlery together making a clanging sound....

I ran. I just kept running forward…through the water and then up the beach. The water was freezing. It was almost up to my chest at first. It held me back. I had a rifle in my hands and had to hold it over my head. I couldn’t use my hands to steady myself or anything....

The woods of Northern Europe 1944 Hold thou thy light before my closing eyes Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies Heaven’s morning breaks, and earths vain shadows flee In life, in death, O Lord abide with me - Abide with me, English Hymn – Trad. The...

As the evening draws near the people in the town begin to get their things ready for the night ahead. They have a quick meal and those who have shelters in their gardens put the blankets, food, torches and books etc, all the things that will help them through the...

‘I hate flies, I hate heat, I hate the desert, in fact I hate bloody everything connected to the place.’ Simon stared around him; the detritus of human life, the sweat, blood, tears, the indelible mark of ‘mans inhumanity to man’ Who the hell did he think he was;...

It’s so beautifully crafted Tipped copper, brass and there’s lead Seven six two Or so it is said Full metal jacket Well, it is dressed to kill Makes a big hole Seven six two mil Packed full of cordite To give it Gods speed Its got my name on it My fate is to bleed...

It’s been almost thirty years since I last bought a vigil candle. They have seen me through some of the darkest times of my life, but I had hoped never to buy one again. Today, my vigil candle is the most important item on my shopping list. When my fashionable...

It was during ‘the troubles’ that HMS Alamein was sent to patrol the waters around Cyprus. British Servicemen were considered legitimate targets for the Eoka gunmen so ordinary shore leave was not an option. Any shore leave was limited to sports events within British...

The night here is hot, stuffy and continuous: ever present rather than surprising, and brutal rather than clever or deceitful. It wallows through the street onto the buses, and between the gaps in the buildings, and through bedrooms and bars. Its soundtrack is the...

Diary Entry: Nov 10th. In lieu of hope, I decide there must instead be prayer. So many have lost the light in this murk. It will be a few degrees warmer than last night, we are told. The chaplain is doing visits tonight but I have declined his attention. His messages...

Dense air blossoms in the drawer to which I am confined. Claustrophobic heat nestles between the layers, like a mouse. I am at the bottom of the hierarchy. Forgotten. Left to dwell upon my own neglect. I am a messenger of dark news for this girl whose lifetime is...