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Warfare
by Peter Wakefield Kitcher

Well, howdy! No problem. Pull up a chair. There’s nobody sitting here. It’s quite full tonight, isn’t it? Hey Joe can you get me another one and one for my friend here. What would you like?
 
You been here before? Where you from? Where? England? I was in England during the war. I was with the 51st Infantry. We got to England a couple of months before D-Day. We had a great time. I’d like to get back there sometime. I suppose everything’s changed now. Yeah. Was you in the army? Where was you then? No, on D-Day. Folkestone! I was in Folkestone just before we went into France. Hey that’s a coincidence. Fancy you being in Folkestone the same time as me. You’ve got to have another drink on me. Hey Joe, get my friend here another of the same and another one for me while you’re at it.
 
I’ll tell you something that happened in Folkestone then. I haven’t told anybody about this for years. We always had a great laugh about it. Would you like another drink? Oh, you’ve got one. Now where was I?

We was in a camp just out of Folkestone and we used to go there and have a few drinks and a laugh but this one night we was in a bar up the hill outside Folkestone. What did you call them? Oh, yeah, a pub. Well we went in this pub on the hill outside Folkestone. There were about six of us and we had a few drinks and in walks some fellows all in blue and they were in your Air Force. They didn’t fly planes or anything, I forget what they were but they were Air Force. Then they had a few drinks and they bought a beer for us and we bought a beer for them and we had a good laugh and one of them kept on telling jokes and we all had a good time and then this man called out “Time Gentlemen” and that always made us laugh ‘cause nobody else called us “gentlemen”.
 
Anyway, we all got up and went out. My friend Johnny could hardly stand but we helped him up and it was a lovely evening and we sat outside the pub for a while chatting and laughing. Then these Air Force fellers said they had to go. Then someone said, “What are all those big white round stones doing by the side of the road there?” and one of the Air Force fellers said they were there to stop German tanks coming up the hill from Germany and then someone else said how could they stop a tank if they were by the side of the road and we all laughed like crazy and then he said that someone had to put them in the road before the tanks came up the hill and then I said why don’t we put them in the road now before they do try to come up the hill. It was all crazy, I can tell you.
 
I tell you there weren’t any cars around there at this time so that wasn’t a problem. And then we managed to roll one of these stones into the road and we pushed it and it rolled down the hill but then it wobbled off and went into a field. So we managed to get another one and this one rolled down the hill and went into the side of a shop and by this time we were laughing so much we couldn’t roll any more. I think we did more damage than the Germans who didn’t come. But we never heard any more about it and we never told anyone about it.
 
Then we went back to camp and the Air Force fellers went off. I’ve often wondered whatever happened to them. Later we went into France and a lot of my friends were killed but I’ll always remember that night.
 
What do you say we have another drink?