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Copyright April 2018
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific living persons.
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This story is alongside 'Vera's Wartime Valentine'. It is independent but tells the same tale from the point of view of the other participant, explaining a different perspective and interpretations of the same events. Neither a sequel nor a prequel, perhaps a 'paraquel'? They can be read in any order, but were written in the sequence Vera-Ken-Doris.
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Ken didn't like this dump. This was a miserable place. A grey misty rain swept across the country, saturating everything and everyone. Why couldn't the rain just pause and then come down properly? The dampness penetrated the tents, huts, even the vehicles. This rain didn't bounce off the road, you couldn't even see the drops land; it floated down like heavy smoke.
The mist hung across the valley, mixed with the smoke from the coal fires. The locals even had a word for it; smog - a mixture of smoke and fog.
Ever since they had been there (which had been a few weeks now), Ken hadn't seen a scrap of blue sky. The rain sometimes stopped for a few hours and then started again but the gray sky seemed permanent.
He looked through the window of the hut where he worked as a store-man. This was nothing like his home town in Montana where the winters were cold and the summers hot. Where mountains were high and the valleys deep. Where it was dry until it rained, and then when the rain ceased the sun came out again.
Here, just a few miles distant there were hills just high enough to separate the valleys. They weren't high enough to even wear special boots to climb them, the troops jogged over them through trees and across moorland full of grazing sheep. The locals called them mountains, but obviously they had never seen the Rockies.
The valleys were dirty industrial strips with a line of coal mines at the bottom, connected by a railway line and a filthy stream. On the hillsides were houses packed in so tightly and joined together that to get to the back yards you had to walk through the house - and that meant through the living room and the tiny kitchen. Each house also had a front room that was never even used, although it was kept fully furnished and spotlessly clean like the front doorstep. Considering that the family all lived in two bedrooms - and some even had lodgers as well, that seemed ridiculous.
The front doorstep thing had him baffled. Every single day, every doorstep was scrubbed white. Yet the footpath alongside was left for the soot from the coal fires and the dust from the coal itself, which was dumped onto the footpath from a truck and left to be shovelled into a coal-shed.
Heck, he lived in a mining town back home, but that was copper mining and that didn't make this mess.
The folks here lived in primitive conditions; most had the lavatory in a brick shed at the end of the garden and had tin baths stored outside, hanging on a hook to be brought in whenever someone needed to wash. Every bath with a line painted around the inside, above which level it was illegal to have the water. During the war everything was measured, rationed, saved.
However from his wooden storehouse where he worked he could not see any of that, just more buildings and in the distance - if the rain cleared - an area of woodland. Beyond that he knew that there were fields and the coast with sand dunes. They ran over the dunes some days, for variety. Along the river bank, along the road, or along the shallow river itself. As soon as he saw the fucking river he knew what was ahead. Heavy, soft sand that sank beneath his feet as he tried to run up the hills.
There was an ancient stone castle next to the river, 800 years old and looking like it was straight from the pages of a picture-book. There were stone bridges, with holes in the parapet where the farmers used to drive the sheep into the river as a primitive sheep-dip back in the olden days. Yet the local people took no account of this unless asked directly.
Heck, if they had any of these things back home folks would be just so proud.
He knew these places because he had to run around them with his squad most days. The sergeant yelled, the men ran and chanted.
Ken wasn't lonely; his mates were good company but he missed his parents, that was all. He had left Montana behind and didn't even have a girlfriend to go back there for. He had been told that he would have no problem finding an English girlfriend but the irony was that he wasn't even in England. He was in a country that he hadn't even heard of before, called 'Wales'.
The locals were insistent that Wales wasn't part of England, they had their own language. But they were certainly part of the same war.
The camp was only a short walk from a massive ammunition factory, belching smoke and steam every hour of the day. There was a field opposite the factory where they burned off the waste material that had failed inspection and there were constant explosions and flashes. A gang of local kids appeared every day to cheer and hoot whenever there was a particularly loud bang.
Railways were all over the countryside, with trains carrying coal, steel, petrol and of course the ammunition. Trucks ferried materials between the factory and another installation nearby where railway tracks disappeared into the hillside. He found that local people did not discuss this place nor any other facility that might be connected with the war.
Near to there - whatever it was - there was another tumble-down castle. And in the town itself, yet another one, set up on a low cliff overlooking the river. Was there no end to these things?
In the night-time there was the blackout, rigidly enforced. Every window had heavy black curtains or was painted black. No door could be opened without the lights inside being extinguished first, no cigarette could be lit without shielding the flame from aeroplanes. Every vehicle had shields over the lights so that only the minimum area of road was illuminated.
Yes, this place was definitely in the war-zone.
In the countryside there were cottages with roofs of wheat straw, usually with crows nesting inside yet the crows were not regarded as pests and left alone. No Sir, he was not in Montana any more.
The local females were mostly a pale-faced lot. Generations of hard graft, filth and poverty had bred a people of short stature and with an accent that he struggled to understand. They seemed to sing as they spoke and interspersed their sentences with random local words. All in all they were not like the girls that he fancied back home - the girls that never fancied him.
What did he want to return for? He had spent his youth eyeing up the talent at hops but getting nowhere. He was nervous and gangly, the girls were blond and confident and had all scorned his advances.
Now, with army food and exercise he had filled out. His shirts were tighter across the chest now, his belly firmer. The spring was in the air, the sap was rising and there were dances every weekend at the ammunition factory. The soldiers regularly walked the short distance to the entertainment hall there.
The events were well attended by the women who worked there, pleased to see an influx of males. So one week Ken went along with the others but as usual he was not confident in the presence of girls.
Even supported by his mates Pete and Hank, he became tongue-tied and let them do the talking - and pulling. They sat at a long trestle table, whilst a band played waltzes on violins and Americans tried to jitterbug.
A couple of girls sat down with the three soldiers. These ladies were not employed at the factory, but drafted to work the fields now that all the male farm-hands had gone into the armed forces. Everyone was doing their bit in this country.
Ken let the others do the talking, boasting brash tales of an extravagant life-style that didn't match reality.
Hank made out that he owned a ranch with thousands of head of cattle whereas he was a lowly paid hand, Pete pretended that he designed motor cars which was fanciful as no motors were made anywhere near he lived.
The girls were pretty, both with dark curly hair and a decent pair of lungs. One asked Ken about his life; he told the truth about him working in a store. Eventually they moved away and he later saw them dancing with some other soldiers. That was the story of his life.
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A month later the officer in charge of the camp decided to hold a dance there. The occasion was St. Valentines but it was more than that. This was an attempt to introduce the troops to the populace, make friends. Some elements were resentful of the strangers with their high pay and access to goods unavailable locally so some integration was deemed necessary.
So banners were painted and posters printed to be pinned on the telegraph poles around the town, especially where the buses lined up outside the ammunition factory and at the railway station built especially for the factory on the main line that went all the way to London.
Ken pressed his uniform and shined his shoes. He'd had a haircut and an extra shave to look his best, now he met his mates and strolled to the briefing room now transformed into a dance hall with a bar and a stage where some musicians were setting up.
By some miracle it had stopped raining and the blanket of dreary grey cloud was clearing from the sky.
He had a beer, good and cold unlike the vile warm brew available in the pubs in the town. Soon some buses and trucks arrived, carrying girls for the dance. They had all made an effort for the night, he could see. However they couldn't disguise the worn out clothes and lack of proper cosmetics. Some even wore heavy woollen stockings. He knew that he could get thin nylon stockings to impress them and that was quite common amongst the others, but he would not stoop so low.
The other guys from his unit, Pete and Hank were dismissive of the herd of females. With a few more beers Pete had suggested a depressing competition: Who could pull the ugliest girl.
Ken was unimpressed; the idea was disrespectful and he would much rather treat the night in the spirit that was intended. Pete wandered over and started talking to a girl with broad shoulders, narrow hips and short legs.
