Summer adventure

A SUMMER ADVENTURE DURING THE 1950'S

"Oh great, sunshine". I looked out of my bedroom window to see a bright
sunny sky, no clouds at all. After the long winter days what a change
to see the sun shining, also the school holidays had begun. No more
school till September. And the start of a new school for me. The older
kids had told me about the teachers at Rother Junior School. But for
now it was summer so I could forget that and have some fun.
Unfortunately our spare ground was still occupied by the army. They
were due to move soon, but for now the guns were still in their
emplacements. Mind you it didn't stop us going in there. We knew a way
in that the army didn't know of. Many times I had been within an inch
of being caught. Now the war was over, no one seemed bothered about us.
Just down the road was another adventure playground. The drill hall
grounds had been taken over by a searchlight battery. During the spring
we had all gone down to the searchlights. They weren't manned now so we
played on them and pretended we were shooting German bombers
down.
I remember the Saturday morning that the convoy of guns was ready to
leave. Crowds of people had gathered to see them off, all waving to the
soldiers. The local girls had turned up to see them off as well; they
had got to know the soldiers very well. The atmosphere was buzzing with
excitement; the locals were bringing the soldiers cups of tea and
sandwiches. All the kids in the area turned up, the guns were over run
with them.
" Hey mate, what do they call these guns?" Patrick Doyle had shouted to
one of the soldiers.
" Push off you kids, before you get hurt". A tall officious looking
soldier had shouted at us.
" Awwwww tell us what they are". Kevin had asked.
We all stood around the officer looking at him with eyes wide open. As
he moved away we all followed him, shouting questions at him.
He stopped and looked down at us and spoke. " They are Bofors
Anti-Aircraft guns, now anything else you want to know?" He rubbed
Patrick's head and moved off.
I shouted him back and he turned again. I looked at him and stuttered.
" Pppplease mister cccaann we have one of the shells?"
He looked at me and smiled and said. " Sorry old son, you will blow
yourselves up if you play with them, now run along with you and
play".
I looked after him, and thought that's what you think mate. I knew for
certain that most of the houses had shells stood each side of the
fireplace. Also we had sneaked in when it was quiet and played on the
guns. As the officer walked over to the convoy, he turned and waved. We
all saluted him with what we considered to be a military salute. He
laughed and saluted back. The line of lorries and guns then moved off.
Every one was cheering them on their way. We stood and looked after the
slowly disappearing line of vehicles. We all had the same thought in
mind, "At last, we have our playground back. Also we have the gun pits
and trenches ".
The Doyle's stepped forward and immediately started dictating to the
other kids that they were in charge and if they didn't like it they
knew what to do. Before a brawl developed a man stepped out from the
crowd and silenced us.
" No one is in charge here, except for me, and I am telling you kids I
don't want to see you in here until it has been made safe". He stood
and looked challengingly at us. He carried on. " There are certain
dangerous areas in this camp and until the bomb disposal people have
cleared it, you stay out, and I mean out. I know you have sneaked in
here before but from now on your secret entrance will be blocked
off".
We looked at each other, puzzled at how he had found our secret
entrance, the Doyle's suggested that one of us had grassed. This
shocked us, to know that one of our gang had turned traitor. Everyone
was under suspicion from now.
We all decided to give the play area a miss for a while, especially
after we saw policemen patrolling the area and the army people hanging
around again.
We concentrated our playing in the farmer's fields; it was fun because
there were bomb craters. We all acted the parts of soldiers fighting in
the trenches. The not so popular members of the gang had to be German
soldiers the rest of us played at being Commandos. It was during one of
our mock battles that we ventured into a woodland area; it was here
that we discovered the dump.
We had entered the wood, taking cover at every tree, our makeshift
wooden rifles at the ready. It was the eagle eyes of Patrick Doyle that
spotted the hidden path.
" Hey look here you lot, this is a secret path". We all knelt down to
inspect it; it had not been used for quite some time. We stood up and
looked at each other. I spoke up. " Well I suppose we should see where
it goes, you never know what might be at the end of it". Again more
puzzled looks, this was more adventurous than playing some stupid war
game. We all decided to follow the path, we pushed Patrick in front, he
was the toughest. After some time we found ourselves getting deeper
into the wood, the trees were closer together and it was darker. This
was becoming really mysterious. Through the trees we spotted a clearing
and in the clearing was a long mound. We walked round the mound; some
of the more adventurous actually climbed onto the mound.
A sudden yell bought us all running. "Hey look what I have found, look
at this". The yell came from Tony Flaherty. Set into the mound was a
hidden entrance; the heavy wooden door was hanging off its hinges. We
had all gathered round, Patrick stepped forward cautiously and pushed
the door slowly open. It was a heavy door and took some moving.
Eventually, we could get inside, it was dark. An argument broke out
about who was to go in first, Patrick said he had found the path so he
should go in. Tony claimed he had found the door so he should have the
honour. Patrick being the biggest went in first. We all followed slowly
and carefully. The steps went down for several feet until we found the
ground levelling out. It was so dark we couldn't see each other. But as
we were commandos and ready for anything we had come prepared with
torches. We let our eyes get used to the light and looked around.
A gasp came from someone, followed by "Bloody hell, what have we
found". Stacked in racks were rifles and sub machine guns, we knew what
they were from pictures. Several boxes revealing their contents were
found to be hand grenades and smoke bombs.
"Oh yeahhhh look what I have found". The joyous yell came from Johnnie
Corbett. He had lugged a great big machine gun out of a cupboard. It
was a Bren according to Tony. He had seen one in the drill hall when
the soldiers were training. This was a real find, but what were we
going to do with it. Patrick suggested telling his da's friends, he
knew they wanted rifles and guns in Ireland.
"That is the most stupidest thing we could do, we would have the police
crawling over the place". I suddenly realised I had called Patrick
Doyle stupid. He glared at me and said. " You had better watch your
mouth Lynchy, or I will put my fist in it".
I edged back out of his view, I didn't fancy getting into a fight with
him. We sat around and after a short discussion decided to keep the
dump to ourselves. We all took an oath on pain of death not to tell
anyone about it.
Searching round the dump we found other things, not as dangerous as the
weapons.
On the way back home we carried our precious finds. Not everyone could
say they owned a tank periscope. Back home I had to sneak upstairs and
hide mine.
For the next few days we spent all of our time at the dump, we even had
to take our turns at guarding it. No one had yet tried to take a rifle
or machine gun home. What we didn't know was that one our gang had told
his brother and when we were away for Sunday school he had sneaked in
and taken a saw with him. He had sawn through the chain and released
all the rifles and sub machine guns. He had then taken one of the sub
machine guns. The first we knew about it was when we saw him bragging
off to some other kids and showing them his find. Before long it was
common knowledge and the bigger kids took over the dump. Soon there was
a rifle or machine gun in every house.
It wasn't long before the police got to know about it, they moved into
our street in force and went from house to house searching for hidden
weapons. The army moved into the dump and cleared it. It seemed that
this was one of many dumps around the country that had been lost or
forgotten. We were told that if the IRA had got hold of the dump there
could have been some serious trouble. All we got was a telling off from
the police inspector. Mind you, I still managed to keep my tank
periscope.
After a short while we were allowed back onto the spare ground. We
spent most our summer playing there. But, we still kept our eyes open
for hidden paths and woodland clearings whenever we went into the
countryside.