FLAGS AND DRUMS

I was on the �Breadline�, doling out hot soup and wedges of stale white bread to the individuals that formed a shuffling, murmuring and smelly queue. George was always the last one in the queue .. his chipped enamel tin mug that he carried with him .. always drained to its last drop .. always held out for a refill if there were any bread and soup left. He wore a patch over an empty left eye socket .. the whole of the left side of his face from jaw line to temple was a mass of white fibroid scar tissue interspersed with grey skin, and crumpled badly healed cheek bone .. rotting teeth .. all topped with a dirty green knitted cap. 

His feet without socks were covered by dirty grey frayed and stained canvas tennis shoes .. his overcoat was a greasy dark grey that matched his grey flaky skin. His right eye held the same expressive stare of numb dazed eyes that one sees in a sheep waiting in a slaughter house .. so abject was his demeanor .. but for all of that .. the Traveler could see the flame behind his eye that still tried to escape its bondage. His Spirit was camouflaged  beneath the layer of humility.

The Traveler had stopped to admire a painting on view in an art dealers window .. when he heard a discreet cough and a light touch upon his elbow .. he turned and beheld George wearing a crooked smile upon his scarred face .. Ah young sir I don�t see much of the Sally Army when they is orf duty .. God only knows what a hard task master God is .. Actually George .. I am a volunteer not a regular for General Booth, the Traveler said. Well said George .. be that as it may .. I thought you would like to know that I have some paid employment .. he held out a bundle of small booklets .. for every 3 I sell, I gets a shilling (20 Shillings to 1 English Pound.) That�s not bad money if you can sell em, he said .. but trade aint-xackly brisk.

Standing at the Tea Stand .. sipping scalding hot sweet tea .. with which George was washing down his steak and kidney pie .. all without a word .. he was obviously hungry. Wiping his lips on his sleeve and his fingers on his overcoat .. ah that�s better he said .. I ope you were not inconvenienced by watching me eat .. but I learnt that one in the trenches .. when the ot food came round .. yer scoffed it quick .. never knew when the next Jerry (German) shell wuz coming in .. or the bloody Top Brass ordering a move .. I could see from the grimy medal ribbons he wore on his overcoat that he had served at Yrpres and the Somme .. some slaughterhouse battles of the Great War.

We sat in the corner of the public bar, and halfway into our third pint of mild and bitter .. Well I don�t really know oo they are .. but as I was taught in Sunday school .. �By their fruits ye shall know them� .. take a look at the cover - o this .. and skimmed a booklet across the table .. I agrees with em! .. he said fiercely .. Curiously I picked up the booklet .. it had been printed by a local group of Pacifists .. The Front cover was plain poor quality white paper with staring black type that was bleeding at its edges .. It read �

I finished reading .. and looked George in his good eye .. well? .. he said .. I aint ad much of an education .. but there is no mistaking the truth .. and when I remained silent .. he said fiercely and insistently .. well yer bloody well cant! .. can yer !?

George was born in a Lancashire Mill Town .. the sort of place .. street after street of mean terraced houses .. one room up and one down.. in which to raise a family. George was an only child .. he had three deceased sisters, all who had died during child birth or shortly after.

It was the same for all of the British Factory Fodder .. It was the typical Capitalist dog eat dog scenario .. He and his Mother and Father were trained like Pavlovs dogs to the sound of the factory siren .. Six days a week .. at 6-30am the doleful wail of the factory siren would bounce around those two roomed houses .. warning the occupants that they had 30 minutes before commencing work .. At 5.55pm the siren would moan again and the deafening clattering looms would run to a clacking halt .. then a 6pm prompt .. like a broad dark river peppered with pasty faces they would emerge .. hurrying for the scant comfort of their homes. The sound of the siren rolling along misty valleys .. moaning its awful dirge .. like Charon the ferryman on the River Styx carrying away generations of Mill Town lives.

Well I were courting at the time .. said George .. she were a bonny lass .. Oh how she  could make my heart dance and brighten up the darkest night ..  and George sighed .. but it was a kind of madness that overcame everyone like a disease .. There were Flags and Drums everywhere and soldiers by the score .. then there were all those upper class floozies with their white feather game .. did you know about that ? he said .. oh but you aint old enough! .. He fiercely said .. and he went on .. oh it were planned orl right .. one day they wasn�t there and the next day they was .. igh class bag ladies he said scornfully .. pimping for the ruling classes .. I know the game .. if yer wernt in uniform .. they stuck a white feather in your jacket .. the cowards badge he hissed .. savagely working the good side of his jaw .. his good eye briefly flared and revealed the unquenchable flame so carefully concealed.

Well the long an short of it .. I took the Kings shilling (When you were sworn in, the recruiting Sergeant hands out a token shilling to each recruit) .. They reaped a Battalion of 1000 men. We were feted like heroes .. many of us still half drunk from the night before .. we marched in three ranks to the railway station in our civvies (civilian clothes) carrying paper parcels and paper bags .. the whole town turned out .. the route to the railway station strung with red white and blue bunting and bedecked with the Union Jack .. and at our head a Regimental Band .. playing their jaunty marching tunes .. there were the Mayor on a wooden platform with his robes .. funny hat and gold chain of office surrounded by his toadies .. all smiling and a waving .. the pavements lined thick with people .. ah they wuz waving their paper flags and blowing flying kisses .. and cheering fit to bust a gut .. like I said .. it were like a kind of mass madness carried on the wind .. Everybody became insane .. only the Conshi�s were not affected .. the only sane ones in a milling willing herd (Conshie = conscientious objector) See they never told us about the Screaming and the dying .. the Glass House (Military Detention Centre = Prison) or the firing parties commanded by a Military Court Martial .. but then they wouldn�t .. would they? .. George added as an after thought.

George had been a driver in an Anti Aircraft Unit making for the front line, when an air bursting shell had taken them out .. of the 4 man crew he was the only one that survived .. and was invalided out after a long period of painful convalescence. Me Mum and Dad were still alive .. but my bonny lass took one look at me .. and turned her face away .. Georges good eye took on a bitter cast .. I shouldn�t ave come back .. I shoulda died .. but I got rotten stumbling drunk instead .. when I got home, Dad were in bed, but Mum were sitting up waiting for me .. she patted the sofa beside her and said .. come sit George .. now tell me all about it .. and when it were all 'ower', Mum took me in her arms .. and the rush of those childhood memories made me cry again. .. ah my baby .. she cried rocking and patting away the pain .. The earlier loss of my 3 sisters gave me a fearful great importance in her eyes .. she were always my protector against State authority, the neigbours or me Dad .. and would rear up like Boadicea at the Romans at the slightest threat to the centre of er universe .. he took another swallow from his glass .. they say that a mans best friend is his dog .. but that aint true! .. George said with conviction .. its his Mum!.

I copped some gas while I were unconscious, before they found me in that field where the blast had thrown me. I wuz invalided back to �Blighty� shore ( Blighty =Soldier slang for home) The gas and concussion from the H.E. (high explosive) collapsed one lung and the shrapnel made a mess of me ead an shoulder. Taking another swallow of his beer .. he went on.. The orspitlle were the worst of all .. long dark nights .. the sobbing and the crying .. the terrified moans as the ward inmates dream remembered the screaming and the dying .. in those days .. the orfficer upper classes and the doctors .. labelled the poor sods as cowards .. lack of moral fibre they said .. even after they nailed them on the cross of upper class aspirations, they still tormented em to the grave with their lies and poisoned barbs.

�Oh its Tommy this and Tommy that .. and its chuck im out the brute .. but its be pleased to walk in front Sir .. when the guns begin to shoot� .. Rudyard Kipling .. said George (�Tommy� = British slang for a private soldier) an aint that the truth of it .. Kipling ad it right. .. we wernt no more than a bill of sale .. in trade for a mans life .. Just then on the opposite side of the public bar, a one armed man lurched to his feet .. and in an off tune, rough edged voice, launched a British music hall ditty .. and the microcosm of humanity joined in the refrain .. 

� It�s the rich wot gets the pleasure an it�s the poor wot gets the blame .. an it�s the same the ole worrrld over .. aint that a bloooody shame!�

Aint that the truth .. said George, and took another swallow of beer. Those bloody flags and drums have a lot to answer for .. same for those bastards that set em beating and waving.

I never saw George again .. but he lives on .. for he is immortal .. the flower of a man and a woman .. scorned, withered and discarded .. embraced by the earth on a foreign shore .. this is the lot of the common man .. and goes on for evermore .. beneath it all the Usury embedded in the system .. the greed and self interest, fueled by the lies and greed propagated by the leaders of men. For these are the fruits of Empire ambitions .. Palestine, Afganistan and Iraq for ever and ever .. Amen!

Ivor Hughes.
Auckland. New Zealand.
June 2006.

Back to Story Index.