Aardvarks to Planet X (book 1 of the hexology in seven parts)

My paternal grand father, whom I never met, would tell my old man about his days in the First World War. And so he in turn, passed them on to me. When the story was told for the umpteenth time, it stuck in my mind like a tribal history. My father in turn had his own adventures, which he related endlessly much to my education.

Being born in 1928 he was a young man at the end of the Second World War, and so consequentially got drafted in to the R.A.F. Not as anything as glamorous as a pilot. The basic training to his memory consisted of feeding time. When the raw recruits were presented with a grey slop. It was far from the meagre, but lovingly prepared food of home. Which brought to his mind the original version of The Four Feathers, where the prisoners are forced to feel like pigs from a trough. His first real look at the enemy was as a prison guard. Where sorry looking Germans brought to this foreign land, were put to useful work.

On this particular day they were to load an open backed truck with furniture, for delivery to another part of the camp. Leaving them to the relatively simple task, he returned later to look up at the teetering pile of chairs stacked up in to the sky. To his dieing day he never knew whether given no command to stop, they were simply obeying orders. Or even in defeat, kept a sense of humour in their hearts.