Winston's Warriors

Copyright © Marlborough Publishing Limited

First Published 2018

Front cover photograph © Laurentiu Iordache

Cover Design © Marlborough Publishing Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner, without the express written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations in a book review.

––––––––

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

www.winstonswarriors.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Winston's Warriors

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Sign up for Stuart Gerrard's Mailing List

Printed by: Biddles Books,

King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE32 1SF

To Catherine, Pauline and friends without whom.....

Prologue

As I drove through narrow Norfolk country lanes, fields of tall ripe wheat shimmered in a haze of golden sunlight. Massaged by a warm July breeze, the wheat swayed in an endless coruscating wave, a blanket of gold covering acre after acre of fertile farmland. It was too early in the day for the summer heat to make the air humid and uncomfortable, but still I drove with all the windows down, luxuriating in the fresh clean smells of the countryside. Swiftly declutching I went down through the gears, dabbing at the brakes, slowing the car, to take a sharp left-hand bend that had appeared out of nowhere.

The bend uncurled into a narrow lane, straight as a die for a mile or so as it cut across the floor of the valley. I slowed the car to a fast walking pace as I looked for a narrow farm track I knew would be off to my left. Overgrown with weeds and wildflowers the two-foot-high verge, fronting the tall bramble hedge, suddenly gave way to a narrow gravel strewn path.

Long scabs of black paint, flecked with blotches of brown rust, hung like mucous from a pair of metal gate posts standing sentinel either side of the entrance to the path. Battered, bruised and twisted, with more scabs of neglect peeling from the cross bars, the five-bar metal gate, hanging precariously off rusting hinges lay at a crooked angle across the path. The joints of the welds gaping open like festering wounds leeched putrid green water down the post, collecting and feeding another suppurating scab growing further down the metal stanchion.

Climbing out of my car I walked over to the precariously balanced gate; lifting it slightly off the ground I forced the gate out of the path of the car and into the welcoming arms of the overgrown hedge and stranglehold of weeds and creepers. The road surface now changed from smooth black tarmac to rutted brown, green and grey farm track. The suspension on the car squealed in protest as one wheel after another dropped unexpectedly into potholes. I quickly changed up a gear easing more power through the throttle as the car climbed clear of the pockmarked track onto a narrow tarmac roadway overgrown with grass and moss. I fed more power into the engine as we approached a steep hill climbing out of the valley.

As I nosed the car around a bend, two square brick-built pillars, one on either side of the road, confronted me. Six feet tall, the brick surfaces were festooned with moss, weeds, and creepers growing from out of joints in the brickwork. From the top of each pillar a metal beam, once battleship grey, protruded out, parallel to the ground, pointing like accusing fingers across a narrow gorge. Hanging vertically from each beam were a series of metal rods stretching down until they attached to another metal beam stretching across the narrow chasm. Weather beaten, gnarled and knotted timbers, rotten with age, stretched from one beam to the other to make a roadway.  The bridge, only 12 feet long and spanning a fifty-foot drop into the River Wensum, looked tired, worn and frail. From here on, I was walking!

Narrow shafts of light, filtering through the thick canopy of branches and leaves, captured minute specks of dust thrown up as I walked through the thickening foliage of the forest floor. The specks danced and floated through my line of vision, carried on currents of warm air whispering through the trees and bushes. All background sound, was muffled to nothing; kept at bay by the thick mantle of branches and closely interwoven leaves. The only sound was the dry rustling of the undergrowth as I pushed my way through the dense foliage, treading on small twigs, crushing bone-dry leaves untouched for years. My destination, my reason for defiling the peace and tranquillity of this lonely secret world was just visible through the thick wall of trees and bushes.

The sun, higher along its arc in the heavens, beat down remorselessly on the fields, roads and the cool waters of the River Wensum as it flowed through the valley. As I looked back a heat haze drifted upwards off the metalled surface of the road, travelling into the sky and distorting the image of golden wheat fields. Yet, in here, in this small clearing amidst the tightly packed trees and bushes of this Norfolk copse, there was no bright light, no July heat, just a faint half-light and a drop-in temperature that bordered on cold.

I had blundered through trees, bushes and thick undergrowth into a glade. Scratched and a little torn, I stood on the edge of a clearing obviously cut and cleared by man. The clearing was some thirty yards by thirty yards’ square, and well cared for. The tree line was cut neat and tidy. No ingress of bushes, low branches or weeds was visible. It was as if an invisible wall surrounded the glade keeping the chaos of the all-pervading forest at bay.

Ten feet in from the edge of the forest a four-foot high, metal mesh fence, strung between timbered posts, formed a square within the glade. The entrance, consisted of a single white painted wrought iron gate. To the right of the entrance, two metal posts supported a plaque, some four feet above the glade floor. I had, reached my journey’s end.

Noiseless steps carried me across the soft carpet of leaf mould until I stood directly in front of the weather-stained plaque. With a white handkerchief and a hefty gob of spit, I rubbed at the partially visible lettering. Years of grime and weathering slowly disappeared under my remorseless spit and rubbing process, eventually, I stood back and read the dedication.

Dr Barnardo’s Homes.

The Site of

The Watts Naval Training School.

Closed June 1952

Short and sweet! Dr Thomas John Barnardo,

nineteenth-century philanthropist, saver of destitute children and founder of a children’s charity, had established a Naval Training School for young men, seventeen miles from the nearest salt water and almost slap bang in the centre of the County of Norfolk!

I took a pace back from the sign and looked across the clearing to the white gate and what lay beyond. I spotted the objects of my quest, three serried ranks of granite. Six granite headstones made each rank, and all were in the same state of disrepair. Moss, lichen, and bird droppings clung tenaciously to the stone surfaces, slowly devouring the stone, eating away at the very history contained within the chiselled lettering carved across each headstone.

Silence, nothing but silence; a total and absolute peace permeated the small clearing. Nothing stirred as I stepped tentatively toward the first of the headstones. Two emotions fought for dominance as they welled up inside me; apprehension and excitement. I began to question myself. Why was I here? Why had I taken time out from my University studies to research a myth, a story, a yarn whispered in dark corners on cold nights in old Norfolk pubs? Why, by choice, had I made the journey to this small glade on a hot summers day, when I could easily have been doing something far more constructive?

The surface of the first of the headstones was grimy, gritty and cold to the touch, I rubbed my fingertips across the lettering, clearing decades of detritus from the granite surface. The moss and lichen had taken their toll and had very nearly won the battle for survival. The name was barely discernible. If indeed, it was a name at all and not just a series of hieroglyphics chiselled to confuse the reader. I reverted to using the grimy handkerchief once again. After much rubbing, twisting of neck and straining of eyes I managed to put a series of letters together, constructing, eventually, the name of the tenant, and a faint inscription of dates.

Taking a notebook from my jacket pocket I jotted down the details of George Merryweather: Born May 1901 - Died January 1915. I moved on to the other headstones, making notes, extracting what information I could from the mask of decay that smothered the granite.

The last three headstones in the third row were different. Not that they leapt out and shouted the fact, it was just a sense, a feeling. A sudden inexplicable ice-cold shiver travelled down my spine. That was when I knew they were different, although they were part of the three distinct ranks of headstones, these three graves were special, very special.

The cut of the letters into the granite was no different from the other headstones. Their size, shape, and even the amount of aging was similar to the other fifteen headstones in the cemetery. Yet as I moved towards them I knew; I was sure that this could be something that may just put the flesh of substance onto the bones of a myth.

I knelt in front of the first of the headstones and started the laborious task of cleaning away the detritus of old age. Gradually letters appeared; slowly words started to form. This time a name did not appear, just a series of disjointed words, lines from a body of poetry perhaps? Faint indecipherable letters breaking up the construction and meaning of the lines.

I moved onto the second of the trio of headstones, a similar pattern emerged, broken lines of engraving; no other information. The third memorial stone elicited no further information. I stood up and stepped away from the last three headstones, carefully noting the location of every grave on a hand drawn plan of the cemetery and clearing. Walking back to the white gate, I gently closed it behind me.  For a moment, I turned to look back across the cemetery. A shaft of light suddenly silently crashed through a gap in the roof of branches and leaves. I watched fascinated at it sliced across the headstones, spotlighting each in turn. It seemed like seconds, but I must have been transfixed, watching the heavenly spotlight, for at least fifteen minutes. As suddenly as it had switched on it disappeared as the angle of the sun running out of line with the gap in the canopy of leaves. The final shreds of sunlight lingered briefly on the last three headstones, then disappeared plunging the clearing back into a twilight world, once again.

Five minutes later, having pushed my way through overgrown hedges that obscured the pathway down, I was walking down the rutted farm track back to the car. Ten minutes after that and I was back onto the narrow country lane heading for the nearest village.

North Elmham boasted a Norman chapel and two pubs, the first of which was closed. The second, The Railway Tavern, half-a-mile down the road was open; yet, even in the middle of the holiday season, only one of the bars was in use, and then there were only two customers.

I ordered a pint of a locally brewed bitter and a sandwich and took the pint to a window table. The two other customers sat at the bar talking in broad Norfolk to each other.  I opened the notepad, checking and expanding on the shorthand notes I had scribbled down. The plan was to transfer the hastily constructed notes to an A4 folder with details of each headstone, dates of birth and deaths, and any other information I had been able to extract. In the case of the last three headstones, just the truncated lines from what I thought may be a piece of poetry.

From one granite slab I had managed to scribble down ‘ome i the Sal, ome rom the ea, the unter hoe rom the ill’ From another, ‘der  e wi stry s. ig e grv d le m le. Gld id nd dly ie. nd aid  dwn a wl’.

Scribbling down the letters off the headstone, ignoring the spaces that were obviously letters, that time and weather had eroded, they made no sense. I repeated the meaningless sentence under my breath.

The sandwich arrived with a clattering of crockery and condiments as the barman placed the snack on the table. Having to move the A4 folder a few inches to make room for the plate, he looked pointedly at the notes on the table and then looked at me.

You researching sum’ it? he almost demanded.

Trying to. Was my non-committal answer?

"Been