over the shoulder and bang

The guns and ammo were securely locked away.

StoryKettle » Evelynn&Arthur » over the shoulder and bang

Copyright © 2023, Michael M Wayman

The last half hour had been gorse bushes and sand, pretty boring. The guard would soon be there. She put her doll back into her bag. They stopped, the guard took the folded paper form from around her neck. Why were all the guards female and overweight? The guard wrote “Unaccompanied Child", her name, the time and date and the name of the station “Military Halt 33” on the form.

The guard opened the door, she climbed out. “Go to the little wooden hut, just up there.” And the guard waved her flag. By the time she reached the hut, the train was out of sight. The hut was empty, she was alone, just a little girl.

She walked down the road, it was wide and made of concrete, she had a map. To her right were long, empty, railway sidings, they hadn’t been used in years, all but one had dark rust on top.

To the left were narrow dirt roads to the small wooden huts where the military base workers lived – they were probably working on smallholdings miles away – there was little evidence of military activity, in fact, there was no activity.

She reached to top of an incline and there they were, rows and rows of tanks and BUMPs. There was also a hut with a sign on it, she read it. “Handheld Panzer Destroyer Trainings”. She wasn’t that good with the local language, but it obviously meant “Antitank Gun Training”.

In the hut she found the training programs on single sheets of paper. The practice guns and ammo were securely locked away in massive steel cupboards complete with keys.

She helped herself to guns and ammo, she had been looking forward to this, she strode outside and tried out her new hobby, she liked it. She grabbed some more ammo and moved over to a long line of tanks. They looked new, perhaps they were thirty years old and freshly painted. After a few minutes they looked really bad, she was having fun.

She looked at her watch – depot time! She located the munitions depots with the help of her map. She fired several top-entry rounds – very loud explosions. She dropped everything and went to catch the next train.