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Synopsis
Since the days of Balaclava and the two World Wars the Waddie family has served their majesties in their pursuit of empire expanding. Each following in their brave ancestors glorious leather boot prints striving relentlessly to out perform their father. Their conditioning for new born recruits would kick off in the cot. The sandpit would double as a desert training zone and the local copse as the jungle. A more formal education would follow from the age of eleven at the army's own military boarding school on the south coast, where efficient killing skills and military manoeuvres would be honed to perfection. Lacking any nearby war zone and in retaliation for an insulting and dastardly deed by a local college the boy commandoes exact night time retribution an event still as famous locally as the Dieppe raid.
A Pregnant Bootlace is based on the author's occasionally tragic but mainly hilarious personal experiences of such brutal soldierly preparation. Inept teachers, drill instructors nearing retirement and bullies lurking menacingly in every corner conspire to lead Waddie on a childhood to hell. Remarkably he survives with only minor psychological damage to exact his retribution in a fitting climax.
Extract from Chapter 3
Before we delve into the details of my chat with Dad I ought to set the scene a bit with a recap of relevant Waddie ancestry. I'll keep it as succinct and light-hearted as possible because I recall that any invitation by the academic establishment to inflict upon me anything remotely connected with historical matters brought on an immediate attack of indifference. On the outside chance dear readers might suffer from similar symptoms, please bear with me as it might hopefully be possible to appreciate more fruitfully what is yet to come.
Whilst Dad and I had been in reasonable harmony on most of the key issues in today's world there was one point that was best left alone. This subject was a military one. The male line of the Waddie family had, almost since records began, followed a military career as you may by now have surmised. Much of the supposedly glorious detail had been passed down from mouth to mouth by our dear aunts and a few remaining records and medals were kept by Dad in a special wooden box that would magically appear at the slightest excuse. It was his most precious possession, as holy to him as any grail. One day, if I was good, it would be mine.
I don t want to create the wrong impression about this long history of armed service. Generations of soldiering on behalf of Their Majesties had not rewarded the family with a densely packed bank account. The shack of Waddie had never been grander than a semi detached and I dimly recall that the finest set of wheels had stretched to a black Hillman Minx. We really were just normal everyday folk whom due to a bit of bad luck and ill timing had stumbled into a military career on an involuntary basis.
In the early nineteenth century Brothers Waddie had entertained the Spitalfield market crowds with spellbinding acts on the London streets. Waddie senior, our first remembered forebear, was a fire eater. In order to create such aerial marvels he set light to a rather raw elixir of Rum that he spewed out between his remaining two teeth in short bursts. Whilst Waddie spat fire his brothers picked pockets until one night they snaffled the wrong wallet and were arrested on the spot. So family folklore has it Waddie Bros. were given three choices, retribution by either incarceration in Newgate prison, a public flogging or to take the King's shilling. In those days the dialling a friend option wasn't available so on their own initiative they took what appeared to be the easiest answer, the army. They assumed it to be the least dangerous of the three, little did they know.
After completion of basic training deep in the Essex marshes they were posted off to wield sabres against Boney and his boys in the Iberian Peninsula. On seventeenth March 1812, at Badajoz, in Extremadura, Spain, (we always liked a place in the sun) it is rumoured that Waddie senior earned his promotion to lance corporal by clearing a square yard or two of the enemy castle ramparts from the top of his siege ladder. This foolhardy act ensured that enough of his partners in arms could breach enemy defences by forming a bridgehead in said space.
Yes we asked the same question too, what on earth was he doing at the top of the ladder in the first place? Surely, military drill and a few months of succulent salted beef and Essex wench hadn't somehow converted him from scallywag into swashbuckling hero. Mercifully and true to form it turned out that he was only there because he had pulled the short straw in the draw in the siege trenches surrounding the citadel some moments earlier. He and twenty men had been allocated to this particular ladder. None of them wanted to be the first to go up it hence the game of chance. As is typical with Waddie fortune in lotteries of any description there would only be one loser.
With sufficient drafts of spirit on board he flew up each rung like a man possessed, determined to be at them. Ooh er, actually we feel sure that his unusual turn of speed was due to being more worried about the bayonet point of the man below him on the ladder than any potential injury from the enemy above. Men that bat with team hetero tend to become a trifle nervous when long naked stiff things of any material become too adjacent to hind quarters. Anyway, somehow he managed to reach the ramparts in one piece and gave the froggies an enormous mouthful. He simply resorted to what he knew best by spitting exploding rum in as many directions as possible. His artistic pyrotechnical displays fried the Frenchies most effectively. It wasn't long before they had had their chips and scattered accordingly, none bothered to stop and applaud. This action was rumoured to be the first recorded use of a flame thrower for warmongering purposes.
The Waddie reputation for efficient dismembering continued unabated through the generations. From Balaclava in 1854, to Rorke's Drift in 1879 and the Boer War in 1899 a Waddie would be somewhere adjacent to the action. Where it was considered crucial to maintain troop moral and therefore discipline the Waddies would be thrown in where necessary to keep hearts and minds on the job of going forward. They would wait patiently behind the lines until the nearest General requested their attendance with the now famous battlecry Show Waddiewaddie. Their unforgiving ruthlessness and sick jokes were enough to revitalise flagging bayonet thrusting and deter the yellow hearted from legging it. Numerous gallantry awards were purportedly presented to successive Waddies until my great grandfather decided it that it might be more prudent to serve in a slightly safer arena somewhat more distant from the bloodletting. He therefore wisely joined the supply service know then as the Army Service Corps. He did momentarily consider applying to become a master chef in the Catering Corps but his commanding officer deemed supplying the troops far less dangerous to his comrades than letting him loose with his Roularde de moushie cabage
It didn't take too much gumption and Waddie administrative esprit de corps before wagonloads of bullets, bully beef and char were being distributed promptly and efficiently to the front line. Trench to trench deliveries in any conditions, with a smile, the new Waddie motto. Grampy's efficiency soon earned him appropriate reward. He progressively moved his way up through the ranks and was eventually commissioned as a second lieutenant at the beginning of the Great War when he was shipped off with the British Expeditionary Force to France. From there he was posted to Salonika (Now Thessalonika). After a year of battling mosquitoes and supplying fortifications of all descriptions he returned to France until well after the madness had ended and came back to Blighty for a well earned rest in 1919. Four weeks later he was off to Ireland for the rough and dangerous task to supply the Black and Tans as they battled alongside the RIC against the Irish freedom fighters.
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