The Perforated Ear-Drum and other Stories

When John was eighteen it soon became obvious that he had to join the armed forces. He wanted to join the Air Force, but first he needed to pass an assessment. The assessment included an IQ test and John registered the highest result yet recorded. However, he was told that he had in fact failed the medical assessment due to a perforated eardrum; he could not believe his ears. He could not join the Navy for the same reason. He was beginning to think that he would not be able to take active service in the army. He was able to sign up and receive basic training. He then joined a regiment called the Scots Greys. John continued to spend his time playing football and played as a centre forward for his regiment. It was decided that he should not be sent into action as he was the most valuable player. John was due to land in France on D-Day, but instead landed the day after due to an administrative error. He would most probably have died if he had landed on D-Day.

It was discovered that John had a natural ability as a radio operator, so he worked in a tank as a radio operator and occasionally as a driver, but never as a gunner. One day, John's tank was confronted by a unit of boys aged between eleven and thirteen. The gunner got out of the tank and grabbed one of the boys. He hit the boy and told him to go away. They had routed the enemy, but they were disgusted that Germany was sending out such young children to kill and be killed.

A tragic occasion in John's wartime career was when his best friend was killed during a skirmish with the Germans. John's friend had advanced on a group hiding behind some bushes, when he was killed by his own captain. It was a tragic accident that affected everyone deeply. The captain felt so bad about the whole affair that he was given a medal to cheer him up.

John did not have many extremely close brushes with death, but a member of his tank crew had been standing smoking a cigar and had moved a pace to one side when an armour piercing shell had landed where he had been standing moments earlier. The same thing happened twice. This eerie coincidence is nothing compared with the strange happenings involving Enoch Dodson. Enoch had been in four separate tank crews that had all died when their tank had blown up whilst Enoch had got away with relatively superficial injuries each time. In the end, no one would share a tank with Enoch Dodson, and poor old Enoch was bewildered and frightened.

John used to talk of "The day we thought we would be killed," with his characteristic good humour. It was during the time when European villages were being liberated from the Germans. The tactic employed was to send in a tank as a sacrifice and to then send in the rest of the tanks to surprise the Germans. It was the turn of John's tank to be the scapegoat. The night before, they finished all their best rations: there was no point in saving them if they were going to die anyway. They were on their way into the village with grim faces ready to accept their fate. The relief was enormous when the Germans surrendered, until the realisation that all the best rations had been consumed dawned upon John and his crew.

John did not like to talk about the war and would often change the subject if it was brought up in conversation. He preferred to talk to men about his warrior days. John experienced some awful sights during the war. When a grenade was dropped into a tank, the tank would blow up. The outer shell would remain intact, but would be full of blood. It was possible to re-use the tanks, but first the blood from the unfortunate crew needed to be baled out. This was one of John's jobs. When the carnage on the battlefield was great, John sometimes had to help bury the dead. This is where John cut a Nazi badge off the sleeve of a dead German. It is also where he buried a young man. The young man's identification revealed that he was being buried on his eighteenth birthday.

After the war, John went on a tour around Europe with his friends visiting the places where they had served in the army, but it soon became obvious that he would need to seek employment.