Blood and the other stuff
When I was a young lad, I was terrified of dead things. Once the schoolmaster brought a dead baby pig to school. I fled from the class shrieking with fear. Some years later I had a real and terrifying experience. I was playing with my cousin on the beach when a fisherman brought his boat in and beached it. My cousin, a year older than me ran off but I stood and watched. The three occupants of the boat off loaded a net with what I thought was the day’s catch still in it. It was in fact the body of a littler girl who had become lost at sea several days earlier. She looked so horrible – all swollen and discoloured, I was frozen on the spot by the horrific sight. When the men put the net down on the sand the girl’s body burst and millions of shrimp gushed out. Since then, I have had a strong aversion to seafood.
Later, I joined the St John Ambulance Brigade, and there I learned to tolerate imitation blood. We did exercises where makeup experts made people look like they had been in a terrible accident. Very realistic but being fake it had no effect on me. Later I joined the Royal Air Force where I had to undergo a hardening course. Not all that different from the St John’s. One not so nice aspect of it was we had to spend a day in a mortuary helping the professional staff. I guess it must have worked, and I thank my lucky stars that it did. On my very first manoeuvre – that’s playing soldiers usually at night. My friend was accidentally shot in the face with a 303 rifle. It was exactly like the St John’s, blood everywhere and lots of screaming. Some of the tough guys fainted. Somehow, I managed to control myself and act near to normal. The shaking and sickness came afterwards. I was posted to an operational station where I lived out and rode to work on a motorcycle. One very early morning I noticed a small sports car propped up against the railway gates (the gateway to a rail yard). I stopped the bike; got off and investigated. Fortunately, I had been on a hardening course for there before me sat a dead woman. Somehow in the accident she had sliced her throat on the broken front window. There was blood everywhere. My worst experiences, I cannot bring myself to write about, but when I write a story these horrible images come flooding back.
