Citizen Survivor Tales (The Ministry of Survivors) Read Free

moment; I remember the scream of a group of Spitfires strafing up and down the beach when I was in the trench and I thought the battle was turning, this didn’t last long though, all of them had been shot down in one way or another within a few minutes. I spoke to the man next to me, but he was in a daze, I think he was still alive at that point but his neck seemed to be open, as if it were an open door. The men were firing, blindly it seemed, into the direction of the beach and I remember feeling completely exposed from all angles in that trench. It was only when we heard the rumblings of the tracks of Panzer Tanks that we decided to move, we saw one pull round the corner, and a moment where it just seemed to stare at us, and then it fired, sending smoke and debris into the air and landing just in front of us. ‘Run, run!’ one of the men shouted, and at that point at least four of them were taken out by German soldiers from one of the high-storey hotels, the one I was defending I think and we stumbled into a baker’s shop.
    We ran through the back of the building and could see the defences above us in the cliffs. There was hand to hand fighting going on everywhere, but we couldn’t shoot without hitting our own men. It was the ferocity that shocked me, they were lunging at each other desperately with anything, bayonets, rifle stocks, bricks, stones, shovels. I saw a bunker burnt out by a jet of flame from a flamethrower, and screaming men running out and collapsing, it truly was hell on earth. These men must have been the parachutists from the night before.
    We headed towards the town centre and there were only two of us left now, I was soon on my own when I turned round to notice the other soldier sobbing, kneeling down, looking for his left arm. I remember running around a corner to see another Panzer Tank staring at me, it shot just behind me and the wall of the building collapsed and landed on me, and for me, the Battle of Brighton, and the War, was over.
     
    What happened next?
    I woke up on my back inside the rear of an open field truck, travelling at speed down some muddy track. I couldn’t see it; I could just feel it. I found myself back at Cambridge hospital believe it or not. It turned out that somehow, I had been blinded, I was honourably discharged by the army. I offered to stay on but they confessed they had no use for me. My current situation? Let’s not discuss that, I suppose I should consider myself lucky I got out of Brighton alive, there are people much worse off than me. Still, I find it hard to be grateful for my current state.
     
    I’ve spoken to other veterans, and do forgive me for this, but their accounts of the battle are completely at odds with yours.
    Well, well war is what you see in front of you isn’t it.
     
    Some people have said that your account – which you have given over and over to the press – is very like some war films which have done the rounds. What do you have to say to that?
    Bugger off.
     
    With that final riposte, Mr Sponge reached unerringly for the glass containing the dregs of his drink and left, turning at the door to greet an old comrade. For a blind person, he gets around almost miraculously well and his limp is often completely cured, if it isn’t in his right leg or occasionally his left. This reporter was left to conclude that actually William Sponge – whose name occurs nowhere in the written record – is an actor of the first water and is rather wasting his time living as a down and out at the Colliery. [Legal – can you have a shufti at this for me before it goes to print, there’s a dear.]*
     
    * Ed: We believe this is a ‘rough’ draft of the article, which was never actually used in the newspaper.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     

 
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