Rewind sixty eight years to a poor boy who found himself like thousands of others in the army, shipped off to fight in a foreign land. He went over with the BEF and his regiment was part of the attack force that were got cut off in Belgium and ordered to dig in and fight so that the rest could get away. His best friend met a bullet to the head and was fortunately killed. Fortunate? Extremely so. The boy and his comrades fought on but were eventually taken prisoner.
Taken to a camp in Poland, the prisoners were tasked to dig coal. But the boy with no name was also assigned a dirtier job in the camp. A job that would put the weight of a dozen worlds onto a mortals shoulders. This job was to cut the throats of fellow prisoners who were informers on the Germans. Slice the bad bad piggies. Slice them unto bloody death throes and let the reaper do the rest.
He stole rotten food from the camps dustbins in order to keep his fellow captives fed. The reader should remember that stealing food, even mouldy garbage, was an offence punishable by being locked in a coffin in the ground.
When the Russians were getting close towards the end of the war, the prisoners of war were marched out into the snow and forced to
march a thousand kilometres until finally liberated in Germany by the British and Americans. Ah freedom! But the price of liberation for some might as well be a dagger to the stomach for on the road to freedom the jeep the boy with no name was travelling in, hit a land mind and he was badly injured.
Eight long months in a sterile basic hospital he stayed and brewed. The many things he witnessed could add desperate chapters to this story but our eyes should be trained to one misery at a time. After his wounds had healed sufficiently, the Army told him he would not be allowed to be demobbed like the rest of his comrades and so he had to pretend to be mad and they stuck him in the 'nuthouse' (psychiatric hospital we'd call them in these more forgiving times.) There he stayed, urinating into his cupped hands and tipping food over himself until they really believed he was a lunatic and finally set him free without so much as a thank you or a guiding hand.
What's a man like that going do? Not exactly working for the post office material so he did what most would do and said "b*ll*cks to the lot of them" and just got on in his own way. Thieving. Conning. Robbing his merry way through life. There's no excuse for it and I am sure he didn't want one. I don't condone it but nor do I condem it either. The boy (still with no name) just did what he thought was best and I can understand that.
Anyway, it's just a story I was told once.
