Free Young Lions by Andrew Mackay

eagled their legs. They dripped two large paintbrushes into the bucket and put them between the S.S. troopers’ outstretched legs. The S.S. men screamed in pain as the paintbrushes touched their skin. Their tormentors continued to ladle on the liquid despite their victims’ desperate pleas to stop. They only stopped when the S.S. men were completely covered from head to toe and from back to front. Each of the men slit open a pillow and emptied the contents onto the S.S. soldiers. The two men stood above their victims and allowed themselves a savage smile of satisfaction. They turned their backs on the unconscious men and disappeared into the night.
     
    The next morning, the blood splattered body of a young paratrooper was found at the bottom of Hereward Cathedral. His wounds were consistent with those of having fallen from a great height. It appeared that following a night’s drinking at “The King Arthur” pub he had decided to carry out an impromptu sight seeing tour and had climbed the many hundreds of steps to the battlements at the top of the Cathedral tower. He had been slightly the worse for wear and he appeared to have lost his footing as he peered over the parapet and had fallen to his death. Friends and eyewitnesses said that he had left the pub shortly before closing time to urinate outside (the pub’s toilets were out of order) but he had not returned. His paratrooper wings had been ripped from his jacket. It was possible that they had been torn during the fall. Inside his pocket was an “Ace of spades” playing card bearing the skull and crossbones emblem of the Fourth S.S. Infantry Regiment. His friends could not recollect the young para ever having expressed an interest in playing cards and he certainly had not mentioned ever having any friends in the S.S.
     
    “Look at them,” Alan said smugly,” the bastards can barely stand the sight of each other.”
    The boys sat on a bench in the Town Square observing a group of half a dozen paratroopers staring at a similarly sized section of S.S. soldiers. The two packs were warily circling each other like two rival gangs of schoolboys in the playground. As Alan and Sam watched an S.S. trooper suddenly lunged across the short gap separating the two groups and punched the closest para in the face sending him flying backwards through the air. A full scale fistfight erupted as the S.S. soldiers and paras piled in. Paratroopers and S.S. troopers who had been strolling across the Square minding their own business witnessed what was going on and quickly decided to make it their business and joined in to help their comrades.
    “Christ!” Sam exclaimed, “We really stirred up a hornets’ nest the other night!”
    “We set a fox amongst the chickens!” Alan laughed at his own joke and Sam joined in.
    The boys heard whistles being blown. “Uh-oh, here come the Keystone cops!” Sam said. S.S. and para Military Policemen were running across the Square, blowing their whistles and drawing their batons. Lorries were driving into the Square and were disgorging their Police reinforcements. Sam noticed that Army M.P.s were making no attempt to become involved and seemed quite content to allow their counterparts in the other two services deal with the situation. And the situation was quickly changing. A minor street scuffle involving a dozen men was rapidly escalating into a major riot involving several hundred. Attempts to break up the fight was not helped by the fact that dozens of Grenadiers and other Army soldiers were standing on the sidelines laughing and shouting, cheering on their champions like a Roman mob watching gladiators in the Colosseum.
    Sam and Alan were doubled up laughing. They weren’t the only civilians who found the situation funny. Several groups of people were also standing around the Square pointing and giggling at the sight of their Aryan Overlords scrambling and scrabbling about in the dust and the dirt like common criminals fighting over