Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? Read Online Free PDF

48-hour pass with instructions to report to Leicester County Cricket Ground for seven weeks’ basic training.
    Forty-eight hours. What could a man do in 48 hours? Actually… Horace called on Eva Bell on the way back from the church hall in King Street and in 48 hours he’d used up three packs of three. It was the height of a hot summer and their love-making sessions took place in the corn fields, wheat fields and meadows of Leicestershire.
    The first person to greet Horace at Leicester County Cricket Ground was Sergeant Major Aberfield, the man who had browbeaten him into joining the battalion. Aberfield gave the new recruits an hour-long lecture about what it meant to fight for king and country, the honour of the regiment andhow a certain Austrian with one testicle, a cowlick hairstyle and a pathetic little moustache needed his arse well and truly kicked. Horace was quite happy to go along with that and if the truth were told couldn’t wait to join in the action.
    Horace settled in to the seven weeks’ training surprisingly well. On his first day he was renamed Jim. ‘Ain’t no fucker called Horace coming into my billet,’ joked a young corporal as half a dozen recruits looked on and laughed. From then on he was simply Jim – a name plucked from the air. Even his friend from Ibstock, Arthur Newbold, with whom he was bunking up, started calling him Jim, and he’d known Horace as Horace for as long as he could remember.
    Horace knuckled down to the task in hand and realised almost immediately that there was little point in harbouring any grudges against his brother, the British Government or even the sergeant major who had forced him into a battalion of infantrymen. He’d save his hostility for the men with the square helmets running amok across the other side of the English Channel. Horace had a job to do… end of story.
    Once a week the new recruits would be transported by bus to a firing range on the Leicestershire and Northants border. Horace loved it. It was his territory, his domain. There was something about the Enfield 303 rifle with its basic ‘V’ sights he adored, and the hairs on the back of his neck never failed to rise as he snuggled the butt of the weapon into his shoulder and took aim at the target 80 yards away. Horace’s shooting was exemplary; he was beginning to be talked about and he came to the attention of the staff sergeant in charge of the range. Staff Sergeant Caswell pulled him aside one day after he’d fired ten rounds into the target. Ten rounds grouped in a circle no bigger than a tennis ball – he had his sights on the battalion trophy that would be awarded at the end of the seven weeks.
    ‘You’re bloody good, Greasley, maybe one of the best I’ve seen.’
    ‘Thanks, Sergeant.’
    ‘The thing is, Greasley, Sergeant Major Aberfield is good too, holds the record for the battalion. He practises at least an hour every day.’
    The NCO paused. A sickly feeling welled up in Horace’s stomach.
    ‘And, Sergeant?’
    ‘Look, Greasley, I don’t really want to knock you back, but believe me your life won’t be worth living if you beat that bastard. He’ll make your life a merry hell.’
    Horace could just imagine that he would. Aberfield was a bully who never spoke, always shouted, and never ever raised a smile.
    The following week Horace pulled half a dozen shots wide. One missed the target altogether and Sergeant Major Aberfield took the battalion trophy by two points. Private Horace ‘Jim’ Greasley finished second.
    Half way through their basic training, on 3 September 1939, Arthur and Horace sat in the mess hall as an address by Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, was relayed on loudspeaker across the hushed dining hall. Chamberlain stated that an ultimatum for Germany to withdraw their troops from Poland had expired and ‘consequently this nation is at war with Germany.’
    The troops were strangely subdued. A few were full of tales and bravado, relaying to