Not again!

"Red Can Bouy, Truro River".

OLD MEN BATTLE ON.

1^st Old Buffer:             Good lord!  Look at the state of his hair! Uniform              Unbuttoned too!

2^nd Old Buffer:            Youngsters have no idea about war nowadays

1^st Old Buffer:             No they don’t, no idea at all.  Men were slaughtered in their thousands in our day and they didn’t make a fuss about it.  No such thing as traumatic distress orders then eh?

2^nd Old Buffer:            Certainly not!   The men didn’t catch stress orders in our day – men were men! We did what had to be done and we got on with it.  I remember sending men over the top without any ammunition at all – run out days ago – but over they went, just like that!

1^st Old Buffer:             Damn right they did!  Shot at dawn otherwise, knew what discipline was in our day.  Slaughtered in their thousands and not a mention of it in the newspapers back in Blighty, happend all the time, par for the course.  Nowadays just one chap has to get blown up and the whole regiment’s in tears and the newspapers are full of it for days – disgusting!  By the end of our little bash the regiment hardly had a whole man left, mostly bits and pieces.

2nd Old Buffer:           Disgusting! No backbone!

1^st Old Buffer:             Quite -  no backbone!

2^nd Old Buffer:             I was blown up you know.

1^st Old Buffer:             Were you really?  So was I!

2^nd Old Buffer:            Had my leg blown off!  This one’s wood.

1^st Old Buffer:             Good lord I never knew!  My hair was blown off, clean off, worn a wig ever since.  Chap standing next to me had his head blown off by the same shell!  We never bothered to look for it you know, far too much going on.

2^nd Old Buffer:            So you didn’t even try to find his head then?

1^st Old Buffer:             No - my hair.  No point in looking for a chaps head was there?  We never had time to look for my hair.  Got a silver plate there now with this wig on top.  Had the same wig for seventy eight years – damn fine wig from the Army and Navy.  Can’t get em like this now.

2^nd Old Buffer:            Good lord!  I never realised.  Chaps don’t even get gassed these days – Convention and all that rot.  We were gassed all the time as I remember.

1^st Old Buffer:             Oh God yes, gassed all the time, gas, flamethrowers, land mines, booby traps....  kept us on our toes.

2^nd Old Buffer:             One did feel for the horses though.

1^st Old Buffer:             Ah yes the horses!  They went through it all right, lying there in the smoke and shell-fire with their guts out all over the road, or what was left of it.  I always felt sorry for the poor dumb creatures myself.  Had to dispatch a good few of em in my time.  A fine loyal chap, the horse, very much like your Ghurkha.  Damn brave chaps the Ghurkhas.  Used to go over the top in the dead of night and bring back heads.  I had em stop that and bring back just the ears instead.  We had far too many heads knocking about to be pleasant.  My horse went right through the whole thing you know.

2^nd Old Buffer:            No, I didn’t know that!

1^st Old Buffer:             Yes, ‘Lightening’, my daughter named him that because he was rather slow.  Came right through the war with two legs still intact, marvellous chap Lightening, stand any kind of bombardment you cared to throw at him.  Stone deaf ever since the one of our nine inch guns blew up at Bladders.  Gun crew wiped out as far as I remember.  I still have Lightening’s wooden legs over the fireplace in the library.

2^nd Old Buffer:            Oh, is that what they are, I thought they were stuffed fish!  A bit knocked about those legs.  My gramophone caught it, practically a direct hit.

1^st Old Buffer:             My God!  Young chaps have no idea!  Going about with flak jackets or whatever you call em – bunch of nancies!  They croak too – always whinging on about “conditions” or lack of equipment.  Can’t think why they join the army if they don’t want to get shot at.  Ought to be blasted hairdressers instead.  If a man lost his nerve in my regiment we shot him as an example to the others.  Nowadays he’s sent back to Blighty for counselling, whatever that is!  Can’t expect discipline in the ranks if you don’t shoot em.

2^nd Old Buffer:            Ridiculous!  Can’t cure funk with counselling, just makes the rest of the men wobbly.  Lost count of how many of em I shot myself.  Still got the old revolver in my desk drawer.  You never know when you might need to put something out of its misery.  Here, let me get you another...

Do you ever wonder why you seem to be out of step with the rest of society?  The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of military action in Libya.  The idea was presented as being strictly limited to a ‘No Fly Zone’, not as ‘regime change’.  Are our politicians so naive that they actually believe such a ridiculous notion, that taking action would not in fact mean taking sides in a civil war? How did they think a ‘No Fly Zone’ was actually going to work, and how did they think it would prevent the use of tanks and heavy weapons?  The fact that action was taken without any consideration of how long it would take to be successful, of how success would be defined, and of how we might withdraw, surely reminds us of the last two conflicts initiated by our leaders.

Perhaps someone will remind us who it was said; “What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”, (or something to that effect).  Someone might also explain to us why successive governments have been so keen to get involved in foreign conflicts and invasions.  (Keep your hair on Leg, Ed.)

Try ‘Aldi’ for good inexpensive wine and for an excellent choice of ground coffee, all 100% Arabica.  There is a great Aldi in Truro almost next to the nightmare Sainsburys.  Not only do you save money but I personally find it a pleasure to shop there.  The store is always quiet when I go, I can always park close to the entrance, the check-out is fast and the stock interesting and of good quality.  Remember to take a £1 coin for the trolley.

Happy shopping!

Pip, pip, The Leg.