Free Darkest England by Christopher Hope

friendly host smiled serenely at the depravity of our history – far removed from anything they knew on his green and pleasant island. If anyone tried anything like that, they would be bloody well sorry. Just let them try. England would stand her ground, fight her corner, knock them for six. If Johnny Foreigner wanted to make trouble, and that was absolutely typical of him, well, he shouldn’t be surprised if he got a bloody nose. And serve him right! As for those engaged in filthy little massacres across the water, they should understand that English soldiers would never again shed blood in tribal wars. And if anyone tried to inveigle them into a war, there would be trouble. Make no mistake. After all, they possessed the largest standing army in Europe.
    That seemed all very well. But if they had given up the notion of fighting and dying, what did they keep soldiers for?
    Doing good, came the reply. Taking up positions between people who wished, for their own private reasons, to kill each other. Observing them while they were fighting. Dropping food parcels on the combatants when they began starving. Burying them when they died. He was proud to say that not one of their European partners had a betterrecord for burying the dead. The Germans could not hold a candle to them. Always dragging their feet. Slow to send troops to the cemeteries concerned. As for the French, well! They got bogged down in arguments about graveyard design and endless philosophical speculation about whether they should be doing more. Calling for subsidies. Demanding standardized coffins. Making speeches. Plotting to do the English down. While our chaps – said Minehost – just got on with the job, the alleviation of suffering, where necessary. Animal as well as human. Soldiers and victims agreed why British burials were simply the best! Commonsensical procedures. Measurable results. I had heard, he was sure, the tale of Dicky the Donkey.
    And so we sat down outside the metal door, behind which the broken men groaned horribly, and told sad stories of the death of donkeys.
    Somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula, not long ago, Minehost recalled, there lived a little donkey called Dicky, whose fate it was to be beaten and kicked and starved by hoodlums. Their customs, said Minehost, required the torture of animals, a talent learnt in infancy when babies were taught to drown kittens. Youths threw chickens from cliffs, in play. Adults were encouraged to murder bulls. Dicky was abused by all the generations – he was kicked, beaten and driven through the mire. Simply because he was a donkey. Soon he lay dying in some filthy foreign byre.
    Alerted by travellers’ tales, England mobilized to save Dicky. Children gave their pennies; candle-lit vigils filled the streets. Protests were made to the ambassadors of the foreign sadists concerned. One dark night, after the celebration of some pagan feast, when the sadists lay sleeping off a drunken orgy, highly trained soldiers snatched Dicky from his Iberianhell and delivered him safely to a hospital in the south of England, where a special ward had been set aside to receive him. Universal rejoicing rang out across the land. But the danger was not yet past, and people were asked to pray.
    Teams of surgeons, refusing payment, worked through the night. Outside the hospital crowds wept and watched through the hours of darkness. Progress bulletins were posted by the doctors. And when, the next morning, it was announced that little Dicky had pulled through, the entire nation celebrated, churches offered prayers of thanksgiving and several Celtic natives from a neighbouring island, dark-haired and strangely accented, were beaten up by crowds under the impression that they were Iberian sadists. Unfortunate for the victims perhaps, said Minehost, but useful in serving notice to other tribes that if they abused their donkeys, they would suffer a similar punishment.
    Even as we sat on the ground the memory of