A TBO Homage: "Do Not Fear The Reaper..."
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2025 9:49 pm
Young Jack Brown had been a hero. During the chaotic retreat to Dunkirk, his badly injured Lieutenant Johnson gave him a 'field commission' to Sergeant. Told him to use his 'country' sense to get the ravaged unit's walking wounded, fit men and weapons to the coast. Wrote the promotion and orders in Jack Brown's pay-book, signed and dated it. Bid the two oldest privates witness, counter-sign.
Then Lieutenant Johnson said, "That last bomb's blast broke me 'inside'. I'll be screaming within the hour, dead by dawn. I've one pistol bullet left, I plan to 'pot' a German. Now, off you go. Good luck."
The group were two fields West when they heard a pistol shot, a yell, a burst of German fire...
Drawing on the 'poacher' skills he'd learned from his father and uncles, Sgt. Brown and his group evaded German patrols, Panzers and Stukas. They had to jump aside from two speeding, half-empty Army trucks they tried to wave down. Minutes later, a wing of Stukas descended, blew those trucks and passengers to scrap. Passing the wreckage, they noted smart uniforms: These senior officers had been the 'Command' section of the very famous regiment whose 'rank and file' were now dying to slow the Germans' advance.
Sgt. Brown, his group and a growing collection of 'strays' reached the coast. They survived the strafed dunes and beach, boarded 'Little Ships', got away.
The promotion was confirmed, a commendation issued. However, as 'Farm Workers' were now desperately needed, big, strong Jack was given an 'Honourable Discharge' and sent home to his young wife and their 'Tied Cottage'.
Now a 'Local Hero', he drew on his farm child-hood and familial skills to side-step the pressing shortage of tractor fuel. To local farmers' delight, he revived the traditional 'Great Scythe'. He harnessed a couple of old, 'pastured' horses to a long-retired hay-baler. Then, with the local Black-smith's help, rejuvenated an Early-Victorian horse-plough. Okay, its first fields' furrows were a tad wonky, but every such strip saved precious, precious fuel for the tractors needed to work the 'heavier' lower land, or tow laden trailers to market and the railway.
Sadly, around the time that foul 'coup' toppled Churchill, the magic went away. Jack Brown, bitten by the proverbial 'Black Dog', began to spend more and more of his 'Labourer' pay and scant winter-retainer on drink. Worse, he was an 'Angry Drunk'. His scared wife and Arthur, their young son, suffered increased privation...
I learned all this in the noisy minutes after that near-hysterical imp burst into the 'Cottage Hospital' screaming, 'Da's hitting Ma ! Da's hitting Ma !"
I'd been sent to that small town South of Lancaster with instructions to 'Stay Dark', make myself useful and await instructions. A glance at the map showed it was a potential 'Pinch Point'. The West Coast's main road and rail routes funnelled through the town's elderly pair of truss-girder river bridges. The road-way's long-standing weight-limit only allowed one Panzer at a time. And, after a scary shower of rivets, the railway now had a 15 MPH limit for 'Heavy Goods'. The next tank-rated crossing was a Medieval ford several miles up-stream.
We were near a coast where, rumour held, 'Royal Navy' submarines some-times met with small fishing boats. Sadly, such 'sightings' were common thanks to the many straying 'sea mines', warily destroyed by German 'guard boat' crews. We were certainly near the 'Forest of Bowland', which had rapidly become sufficiently wild for even Lancaster's braw 'Jaegers' to consider 'Indian Country'.
As no 'Domestic' positions were available, I applied for and got a job as 'Nursing Assistant' in the town's 'Cottage Hospital'. The staff were delighted. Of their two exhausted doctors, the older, semi-retired Dr. Griffiths acted more as a 'Diagnostician', patiently triaging the queued misery, easing Dr. Jenkins' case-load. The over-worked, under-supplied 'Clinic' and 'District' Nurses soon realised I was rather more than I seemed. But, after watching me closer than the ruddy Gestapo, never mind the local Resistance, they decided I was neither 'Plant' nor 'Active' Resistance operative. Also, where-ever, how-ever I'd been trained, I knew 'General Nursing'. And, a quick study, I soon acquired the rudiments of Midwifery. I certainly had the very, very useful knack of politely deploying my fluent, 'Formal Viennese' German, expounding irrefutable logic and making the local authorities belatedly 'See Sense'.
Thus, we managed to get some 'Red Cross' parcels. Then, as the Germans' own doctors and nurses were progressively re-deployed to the beset 'Eastern Front', a way to invoice our services.
But, what had gone wrong in the Brown house-hold ? It was common knowledge that Jack Brown had been spending money on drink that really, really should have gone into the family cook-pot. From the skinny child's frantic words, from snatches of gossip, it seems Ma's 'monthlies' had stopped. As had mine. As had the other nurses, as had almost every woman in town. Extended privation will do that: It had been a poor harvest, a dank Autumn, a miserably long Winter. Pedalling to home-visits on my re-purposed 'Butcher Boy' step-through bicycle, I'd used my Botany skills to glean haw-hips, garnish etc from hedge-rows, supplement our inadequate rations, avert serious scurvy.
Some-how, badly educated Jack Brown got the idea in his head that his wife's monthlies had stopped because she was pregnant. Then, he'd become convinced this was not by him. So, after trying to beat the 'truth' out of her, he'd now tried to induce an abortion by hitting her 'Below the Belt'...
The local Constables had retreated from previous confrontations after 'Angry Drunk' Jack began swinging his 'Great Scythe'. German authorities preferred not to intervene in 'Domestic Disputes', lest it became unnecessary atrocity, never mind an open feud. And, 'Donner Und Blitzen', the paper-work !!
Was there an alternative to shooting Jack ? Lacking a 'Tortoise' of Romans or squad of Swiss Halberdiers, it would seem to be down to me. I sighed, explained my 'half-baked' plan to the other nurses. After borrowing a spare walking-stick from the Clinic's 'elephant's foot', I pedalled off...
I knocked on the cottage door, replied to Jack's incoherent query with a cheery, "Nurse Smith to see Mrs. Brown !"
Jack stormed out, brandishing his 'Great Scythe', snarling, "You'll mind your own damned--"
Takes two good hands to wield a scythe that big. My stick across his left wrist reduced those to one, cost him control. Then I hit his right arm. It was not a major fracture, would heal before the Spring. Still, I'd disarmed him. With his scythe lost, he tried to kick me. I side-stepped, rapped behind his right knee. And, down he went.
"Mister Brown, you have a choice: Stay down while we work this out, or 'Mamma Spank'."
After several educational contusions, he yielded, muttered unprintable assent. Nodding politely, I tucked my stick through my belt. I took my 'Nurse Bag' from the bicycle's basket, picked up the 'Great Scythe' by its sling and went inside.
The cottage was small, a minimally furnished room either side of the 'through' hall-way, a precipitous stair to the low attic's beds. Unfortunate Daisy Brown was huddled in a corner of the cold, dank kitchen. She was alive, conscious, but her gaunt, half-starved face and frame had more layered bruises than a hard month of 'Chinese Wrestling'.
She peered in confusion as I heaved the huge scythe onto the table, but found the wit to feebly ask, "Shouldn't you be a skeleton in a hooded robe ?"
"Your brave little lad out-ran him on the way to the hospital !" I quipped. "There'll be a ride along in a while, let's see how you are--"
"Jack ?"
"Had to whup him a few times." I patted my walking stick. "Should heal clean."
She was saved reply by the cheery tootle from our wood-gas ambulance-bus. It had needed a while to warm up, then was barely faster than my old bicycle. Plus, it had made a detour.
Dr. Jenkins led in a nurse. After eloquent sighs for Daisy Brown's bruises, they checked her over, determined she needed admission for 'Observation'. Leaving the nurse to guide the waiting stretcher team, Dr. Jenkins then examined brooding Jack Brown, who was being lectured by two grim Constables. Jack's flinch when he saw me spoke volumes about our encounter. It certainly brought a flicker of a smile to Dr. Jenkins' so-weary eyes.
As Jack's swelling wrist and broken arm precluded hand-cuffs, he was asked if he'd 'Go Quietly'. Our eyes met. He choked out, "Yes ! Yes ! Just keep that woman away from me !"
As Jack was helped aboard the ambulance-bus, Dr. Jenkins touched my arm, quietly asked, "Single-stick ?"
"Hockey," I replied, drawing chuckles from the Constables. "Irish Rules."
Dr. Jenkins took a slow breath, whispered, "Nurse Smith, ours is a wide-flung 'medical' family. A niece, on the Fylde Coast, has a similar, uh, history to yours. She's so deft with a surgical blade, we call her--"
"Scalpel ?" Then, before he could reply, I let some of the carefully cultivated kindness slip from my eyes, let him glimpse the haunted Abyss beyond. As he gulped, I quietly warned, "Speak not of this: Do not even surmise."
"Ma'm..."
Monstrously hung-over, charged with 'Drunk and Disorderly', 'Making Threats' and, yes, 'Actual Bodily Harm', Jack Brown was hauled before our local Magistrate. After studying the Police report, the bemused official asked his Clerk, 'Hockey ? Really ?' Whose straight-faced reply of 'Irish Rules' did lighten the proceedings some-what. These injuries earned Jack a six-month 'Suspended Sentence'. Though apparently lenient, this was strictly conditional on not approaching his wife or child during that time, and on staying sober, attending the Police station alternate days to have his breath smelled.
Us nurses 'tithed' our minimal rations to 'feed up' Daisy and young Arthur. Then she was found a job as 'Kitchen-Assistant / Washer-up' at the local 'Farmers Arms' pub. That came with 'bed and board', so they stayed warm, and certainly ate no worse than the rest of us. Also, with her *there*, Jack had to go much further a-field to drink. What little he could afford, he 'walked off' getting back to the cottage...
Then Lieutenant Johnson said, "That last bomb's blast broke me 'inside'. I'll be screaming within the hour, dead by dawn. I've one pistol bullet left, I plan to 'pot' a German. Now, off you go. Good luck."
The group were two fields West when they heard a pistol shot, a yell, a burst of German fire...
Drawing on the 'poacher' skills he'd learned from his father and uncles, Sgt. Brown and his group evaded German patrols, Panzers and Stukas. They had to jump aside from two speeding, half-empty Army trucks they tried to wave down. Minutes later, a wing of Stukas descended, blew those trucks and passengers to scrap. Passing the wreckage, they noted smart uniforms: These senior officers had been the 'Command' section of the very famous regiment whose 'rank and file' were now dying to slow the Germans' advance.
Sgt. Brown, his group and a growing collection of 'strays' reached the coast. They survived the strafed dunes and beach, boarded 'Little Ships', got away.
The promotion was confirmed, a commendation issued. However, as 'Farm Workers' were now desperately needed, big, strong Jack was given an 'Honourable Discharge' and sent home to his young wife and their 'Tied Cottage'.
Now a 'Local Hero', he drew on his farm child-hood and familial skills to side-step the pressing shortage of tractor fuel. To local farmers' delight, he revived the traditional 'Great Scythe'. He harnessed a couple of old, 'pastured' horses to a long-retired hay-baler. Then, with the local Black-smith's help, rejuvenated an Early-Victorian horse-plough. Okay, its first fields' furrows were a tad wonky, but every such strip saved precious, precious fuel for the tractors needed to work the 'heavier' lower land, or tow laden trailers to market and the railway.
Sadly, around the time that foul 'coup' toppled Churchill, the magic went away. Jack Brown, bitten by the proverbial 'Black Dog', began to spend more and more of his 'Labourer' pay and scant winter-retainer on drink. Worse, he was an 'Angry Drunk'. His scared wife and Arthur, their young son, suffered increased privation...
I learned all this in the noisy minutes after that near-hysterical imp burst into the 'Cottage Hospital' screaming, 'Da's hitting Ma ! Da's hitting Ma !"
I'd been sent to that small town South of Lancaster with instructions to 'Stay Dark', make myself useful and await instructions. A glance at the map showed it was a potential 'Pinch Point'. The West Coast's main road and rail routes funnelled through the town's elderly pair of truss-girder river bridges. The road-way's long-standing weight-limit only allowed one Panzer at a time. And, after a scary shower of rivets, the railway now had a 15 MPH limit for 'Heavy Goods'. The next tank-rated crossing was a Medieval ford several miles up-stream.
We were near a coast where, rumour held, 'Royal Navy' submarines some-times met with small fishing boats. Sadly, such 'sightings' were common thanks to the many straying 'sea mines', warily destroyed by German 'guard boat' crews. We were certainly near the 'Forest of Bowland', which had rapidly become sufficiently wild for even Lancaster's braw 'Jaegers' to consider 'Indian Country'.
As no 'Domestic' positions were available, I applied for and got a job as 'Nursing Assistant' in the town's 'Cottage Hospital'. The staff were delighted. Of their two exhausted doctors, the older, semi-retired Dr. Griffiths acted more as a 'Diagnostician', patiently triaging the queued misery, easing Dr. Jenkins' case-load. The over-worked, under-supplied 'Clinic' and 'District' Nurses soon realised I was rather more than I seemed. But, after watching me closer than the ruddy Gestapo, never mind the local Resistance, they decided I was neither 'Plant' nor 'Active' Resistance operative. Also, where-ever, how-ever I'd been trained, I knew 'General Nursing'. And, a quick study, I soon acquired the rudiments of Midwifery. I certainly had the very, very useful knack of politely deploying my fluent, 'Formal Viennese' German, expounding irrefutable logic and making the local authorities belatedly 'See Sense'.
Thus, we managed to get some 'Red Cross' parcels. Then, as the Germans' own doctors and nurses were progressively re-deployed to the beset 'Eastern Front', a way to invoice our services.
But, what had gone wrong in the Brown house-hold ? It was common knowledge that Jack Brown had been spending money on drink that really, really should have gone into the family cook-pot. From the skinny child's frantic words, from snatches of gossip, it seems Ma's 'monthlies' had stopped. As had mine. As had the other nurses, as had almost every woman in town. Extended privation will do that: It had been a poor harvest, a dank Autumn, a miserably long Winter. Pedalling to home-visits on my re-purposed 'Butcher Boy' step-through bicycle, I'd used my Botany skills to glean haw-hips, garnish etc from hedge-rows, supplement our inadequate rations, avert serious scurvy.
Some-how, badly educated Jack Brown got the idea in his head that his wife's monthlies had stopped because she was pregnant. Then, he'd become convinced this was not by him. So, after trying to beat the 'truth' out of her, he'd now tried to induce an abortion by hitting her 'Below the Belt'...
The local Constables had retreated from previous confrontations after 'Angry Drunk' Jack began swinging his 'Great Scythe'. German authorities preferred not to intervene in 'Domestic Disputes', lest it became unnecessary atrocity, never mind an open feud. And, 'Donner Und Blitzen', the paper-work !!
Was there an alternative to shooting Jack ? Lacking a 'Tortoise' of Romans or squad of Swiss Halberdiers, it would seem to be down to me. I sighed, explained my 'half-baked' plan to the other nurses. After borrowing a spare walking-stick from the Clinic's 'elephant's foot', I pedalled off...
I knocked on the cottage door, replied to Jack's incoherent query with a cheery, "Nurse Smith to see Mrs. Brown !"
Jack stormed out, brandishing his 'Great Scythe', snarling, "You'll mind your own damned--"
Takes two good hands to wield a scythe that big. My stick across his left wrist reduced those to one, cost him control. Then I hit his right arm. It was not a major fracture, would heal before the Spring. Still, I'd disarmed him. With his scythe lost, he tried to kick me. I side-stepped, rapped behind his right knee. And, down he went.
"Mister Brown, you have a choice: Stay down while we work this out, or 'Mamma Spank'."
After several educational contusions, he yielded, muttered unprintable assent. Nodding politely, I tucked my stick through my belt. I took my 'Nurse Bag' from the bicycle's basket, picked up the 'Great Scythe' by its sling and went inside.
The cottage was small, a minimally furnished room either side of the 'through' hall-way, a precipitous stair to the low attic's beds. Unfortunate Daisy Brown was huddled in a corner of the cold, dank kitchen. She was alive, conscious, but her gaunt, half-starved face and frame had more layered bruises than a hard month of 'Chinese Wrestling'.
She peered in confusion as I heaved the huge scythe onto the table, but found the wit to feebly ask, "Shouldn't you be a skeleton in a hooded robe ?"
"Your brave little lad out-ran him on the way to the hospital !" I quipped. "There'll be a ride along in a while, let's see how you are--"
"Jack ?"
"Had to whup him a few times." I patted my walking stick. "Should heal clean."
She was saved reply by the cheery tootle from our wood-gas ambulance-bus. It had needed a while to warm up, then was barely faster than my old bicycle. Plus, it had made a detour.
Dr. Jenkins led in a nurse. After eloquent sighs for Daisy Brown's bruises, they checked her over, determined she needed admission for 'Observation'. Leaving the nurse to guide the waiting stretcher team, Dr. Jenkins then examined brooding Jack Brown, who was being lectured by two grim Constables. Jack's flinch when he saw me spoke volumes about our encounter. It certainly brought a flicker of a smile to Dr. Jenkins' so-weary eyes.
As Jack's swelling wrist and broken arm precluded hand-cuffs, he was asked if he'd 'Go Quietly'. Our eyes met. He choked out, "Yes ! Yes ! Just keep that woman away from me !"
As Jack was helped aboard the ambulance-bus, Dr. Jenkins touched my arm, quietly asked, "Single-stick ?"
"Hockey," I replied, drawing chuckles from the Constables. "Irish Rules."
Dr. Jenkins took a slow breath, whispered, "Nurse Smith, ours is a wide-flung 'medical' family. A niece, on the Fylde Coast, has a similar, uh, history to yours. She's so deft with a surgical blade, we call her--"
"Scalpel ?" Then, before he could reply, I let some of the carefully cultivated kindness slip from my eyes, let him glimpse the haunted Abyss beyond. As he gulped, I quietly warned, "Speak not of this: Do not even surmise."
"Ma'm..."
Monstrously hung-over, charged with 'Drunk and Disorderly', 'Making Threats' and, yes, 'Actual Bodily Harm', Jack Brown was hauled before our local Magistrate. After studying the Police report, the bemused official asked his Clerk, 'Hockey ? Really ?' Whose straight-faced reply of 'Irish Rules' did lighten the proceedings some-what. These injuries earned Jack a six-month 'Suspended Sentence'. Though apparently lenient, this was strictly conditional on not approaching his wife or child during that time, and on staying sober, attending the Police station alternate days to have his breath smelled.
Us nurses 'tithed' our minimal rations to 'feed up' Daisy and young Arthur. Then she was found a job as 'Kitchen-Assistant / Washer-up' at the local 'Farmers Arms' pub. That came with 'bed and board', so they stayed warm, and certainly ate no worse than the rest of us. Also, with her *there*, Jack had to go much further a-field to drink. What little he could afford, he 'walked off' getting back to the cottage...
