Over The Top
Being a priest I see a lot of troubled people and hear a lot of their problems. But sometimes, you have to have a sense of perspective.

Although I am a man of the cloth I am not the product of a 'virgin birth' or some other hokum like that (Whoops, sorry!) and I do have relatives and this story is about my Great Grandfather.

I only remember him vaguely since he died when I was about three years old but there's one thing I can recall and it's always stuck in my mind. He was a soldier in World War One and as such was based in a filthy, muddy, rat-ridden trench somewhere in what is now known as 'The Continent'. My Great Grandmother died a few years after him so I remember her better and she always said that he was a top bloke who had helped the world more than we knew. Well, she didn't call him a "top bloke", but it was words to that effect.

Anyhoo, back to the story. I recall he had a dodgy left thumb; no feeling or movement in it, and had a weird black scar around it. As a child I had innocense and curiosity on my side, so didn't have the senstivity of age and asked him straight out how he came to have this oddly deformed digit. He went quiet for a few seconds and then told me that he'd tell me but I was never to ask him about it again. With wide eyes I sat and waited for him to speak.

Apparently, during the war there were not enough guns to go around so some of the soldiers in his troop of men just had knives to defend them against the bosh and were expected to just run up to a German soldier and stab the crap out of them. Sorry, I mean 'perform gallant hand-to-hand combat' (yeh, right). He was shit-scared because of this and knew that at some stage he was going to climb out of his trench and run towards a load of equally shit-scared Germans - who had guns.

The time came and the whistle was blown which was the signal for the soldiers to go 'Over The Top'. He climbed the ladder and ran, knife in hand, towards the enemy gunfire, his fellow soldiers collapsing and dying around him. Being the clumsy twat he was (runs in the family, believe me) he fell over a lump of dirt and putting his hands in front of him to break his fall neatly sliced off his left thumb! It was left hanging by a strip of skin and being the man he was he tucked it into his palm, clenched his fist around it and continued running at the Germans. Unfortunately, in his confusion, pain and panic he was running the wrong way and ended up falling into his own trench!

At that point he gave up and looked at his bleeding stump of a half-thumb. The pain started to really kick in then and he realised that if nothing was done he'd be sans-digit for the rest of his life (however short or long that was going to be) so not having any medical help he jammed the thumb back onto his hand, ripped a piece of cloth off his uniform and wrapped his hand up with it.

So that's how he got the strange scar. By fighting (well, attempting to) during one of the World's most grisly wars.

I know it's a day late but when you see someone selling poppies in the street/mall/wherever, put whatever you can into their collection tin and please don't take a poppy - it does cost them money and you should just be happy in yourself that you've helped some of the people who have suffered more than you'll ever know.

Jerry

Sorry for length, it's the strain of hanging by my nailed hands. Ohhhh, please don't smite me lord! (What the fuck is 'smiting' anyway?)
( Fr_Jerry_McGwier looked over both shoulders at, Sun 12 Nov 2006, 16:07, Reply)