A few evenings ago, I was watching TV on the history channel and they mentioned the fact that, during World War 2 around 1941, British commandos used to raid German installations on the coast of France armed with crossbows. These were used until the enemy started firing at them. Since the gunfire ruined the previous silence of the operation, the commandos then switched to using their Sten sub-machine guns. But the crossbows intrigued me, and still do.
During World War 2, we lived in the country about 20 miles west of London. Most of the large country houses around us had been taken over by the government and had become army camps. We were always in and out of these camps. During one visit, I asked about the crossbows and was shown one, and became even more intrigued. I had a pretty good workshop with all the woodworking tools and even a small metal working lathe. So, I thought I would have a go at making one. After several days of designing and building, I had a prototype. But , it took a very long time to get a working model and it did not work too well. Winter was upon us, and we had quite a bit of snow, so I set about building a half scale crossbow, mostly out of wood, for shooting high velocity, super accurate snowballs. This was a great success. We practiced shooting and, pretty soon, we could hit anything at up to 20 yards or so. One day, we were out in the lane outside my parents house and we saw the vicar cycling down the lane on his tall bicycle on his way to the church. He always wore a very tall black hat, rather like an opera hat with rounded corners. I have never seen another hat like it. I loaded a 2 inch snowball and, as the vicar came abeam our position, I fired...... and his hat flew off his head. That amazed me! We threw ourselves down in the deep snow to hide and silence our laughter until he retrieved his hat and cycled on. We were absolutely soaked when we got up. But, it was worth it.
We also had a lot of fun with the mini crossbow on the local golf course. This was a long course on a large area of land between two villages. There were very few houses around it so we could walk all over the golf course away from the fairways without being seen by many people. There was one section where the fairway ran uphill and the green was just over the crest of the rise. To the left of the fairway was an large area of tall grass and gorse bushes which rose above the fairway and had a small bowl at its highest point. We could lie in the bowl and see the whole fairway and the green to our left, without being seen. We had found that the crossbow was excellent for firing golf balls and had a pretty good range. When we saw a foursome shooting up the hill, we started firing balls at the green on a low trajectory. There were no golf carts in those days, so it took the foursome a while to walk the length of the fairway. You could not see the green itself from the fairway, only the flag. When they got to the crest, instead of seeing their four balls on the green, there were probably a dozen or more. We had plenty of ammunition. We heard murmerings like "those bloody kids must be around here somewhere" Yes, indeed!
Thinking about this made me chuckle to myself and got me thinking about other pranks we used to pull at that age. Another weapon we used was a slingshot or catapult as we called them in England. They were easy to make and fitted in your pocket . We became very proficient in using them and spent hours at target practice.
One Sunday, we were in the field adjacent to Clock House Farm, about half a mile from my house. This was a very imposing red brick building with a small clock tower above the front door. The farmer himself seemed to be a miserable old devil who never smiled and certainly did not like small boys. I often used to wonder if he had ever been one himself. Adjacent to the hedge running along the edge of the field was a large barn and we noticed this day that the barn door was open and the farmer was loading a small four wheeled, rubber tired wagon to which his little horse was harnessed. This was a nice friendly little horse and we quite often made a fuss of him when he was loose in the field. Little boys tend to notice strange things and we had commented before that this horse was extremely well endowed for his size and his penis always seemed to be " in the down position". It was on this day and we were discussing the idea that, if we fired a small rock and hit him in the apendage, what would it do apart from make his eyes water? The horse was fairly close to the hedge so, we took aim through the hedge and both fired at the same time. One or both of us must have hit him because he let out a loud whinnie and reared up on his hind legs then accelerated to a gallop down the hill towards the farm gate. He roared out into the road, oblivious of any traffic and galloped up the hill toward the next village. The tailgate of the wagon was down, so things were flying all over the place. The farmer came out of the barn looking totally perplexed and went running after him. The horse and wagon were now out of sight but we could hear car horns in the distance so he was probably causing some problems somewhere. A few minutes later, we heard the clopping of hooves and back came the little guy, still on full throttle, down the hill. The farmer tried to stop him but he was having none of that and roared through the gate and up the hill to the farm. He came to a halt at the water trough where he proceeded to drink water by the gallon. We never did notice if his eyes were watering, but we had our question answered. There would be no use in reloading the wagon, the little chap was done for the day.
The field on the other side of Clock House Farm had a stream running through the center of it. The stream was only a little over a foot wide and a few inches deep but was fairly fast flowing. We often used to play in this stream and would sometimes narrow it down with mud to increase the rate of flow or we would create a waterfall. One Sunday afternoon, we had diverted the stream slightly while we built a waterfall in the main stream. Then, we let the stream flow over the waterfall and we were very pleased with the result. So, we built the waterfall up, using sticks to hold back the mud. Now, we had a dam about 2 feet tall. We built a sluiceway to one side of the dam to limit the level of the water. It was now beginning to get dark, so we left it and went home. The following weekend, we went back to the stream and found the dam to be intact and the sluiceway still working. We were really excited by our engineering feat. Behind the dam, the stream had now become a small lake running the whole length of the field and about 20 feet wide in places. As we were congratuating ourselves, we were suddenly joined by Stan, the village bully and his elder brother, commonly known as the village idiot. We learned a lot of new words and found out that the stream flows past the back of their house, one of about a dozen council houses about half a mile away. Apparently, the swollen stream had flooded the kitchens of these houses. While still cursing, Stan and his brother quickly demolished the dam. We decided to take off before they found another use for their plentiful muscles. As they cleared the dam, the sudden rush of all the entrapped water poured over the banks of the stream and formed a temporary lake in the farmyard across the road.
We never could make out why a dozen or so families had allowed their houses to become partially flooded without investigating the cause.
Another item we found which made an excellent plaything were the little rubber tubes filled with gasoline which were used for filling cigaret lighters. These were about 2 inches long and a little over half an inch in diameter. They had a small nipple at one end and you were supposed to poke a pin through the nipple to make a hole. Then you could squeeze the liquid into the lighter. We found that when you made a hole in the nipple, you could light the gasoline with a match. Then, if you squeezed the tube, a long flame would shoot out. We thought that if you lit the tube and then fired the tube with a catapult or crossbow, you would have a sort of Molotov cocktail. The only problem was that it didn't work. When it hit the target, the flame went out. We were playing with one of these one day when standing at the crossroads near my house. I accidentally dropped the burning tube and it fell in the road and the whole tube caught fire. When the gasoline had burned off, it had caused about a four inch circle of the tar to burn. So, there was a little fire in the crossroads. We were thinking that, if we left this, it would burn for hours. So we did, and we went and hid in the hedge to see how drivers would handle it. Some car drivers drove over it without even noticing it. We just hoped their cars did not blow up a few minutes later. Most drivers squeezed between the fire and the verge. Nobody bothered to get out to investigate what the fire was. They could easily have stamped on it to put it out. I guess they were too busy. Then a double deck bus came up the road. He was too big to get between the fire and the verge, so he drove the bus right up on the verge to avoid the little fire. Then, along came the village policeman riding his tall bicycle and wearing his tall helmet. He stopped and dismounted and studied the situation. He rubbed his chin for a bit, then removed his helmet, scratched his head and put his helmet back on. Then he got back on his bike and pedalled off towards his house. He was probably going home for lunch or going to call a fire engine. After about half an hour, we figured we had seen enough. So we walked over, stamped on the flames to put them out, and also went to lunch.
Talking of buses, another silly story comes to mind. One day, after school, Stephen and I were sitting upstairs on a No 442 bus at the railway station waiting for it to take us home. We were sharing a bag of cherries and they were good. Normally, we would flick the pips at people between ouur forefinger and thumb. But, we decided against that this day. Sitting in front of us was a very nice elderly gentleman who was always very polite and nicely mannered. He was wearing a very nice gray bowler hat with a hard, turned up brim. This brim looked just the place for our cherry pips. So, I gently sneaked one into the back of the brim, and he didn't seem to notice. Then, Stephen tried the same and it worked fine. By the time we had finished all the cherries, there must have been 30 pips in his brim. The other people sitting around could see what was going on. Some were smiling, some gave disapproving looks.When we got to Granville Avenue, he got up and went downstairs to get off. We were looking down out of the window and we saw him get off. He met a well dressed elderly lady who was waiting to get on the bus. In typical polite fashion, he greeted her and tipped his hat to her, and showered her with cherry pips. There was a lot of confusion and embarassment and, as the bus pulled away, he glared up at our smiling faces in the window.... and then smiled. As I said, he was a nice gentleman.
Well, I think that's enough trivia for now. For some reason, if something makes me think of one of these stories, it usually leads to an avalanche of others. This had better be the end of this one.
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