-8-
It's very dangerous, this.
Sergeant Arthur Wilson liked his job as the sergeant of the Walmington on Sea platoon, even if he found working under Mainwaring to be a chore at the best of times; being a mild-mannered man, Wilson didn't like conflict, and most of the time Mainwaring wasn't that bad to work under even if he could be a bore.
But sometimes Wilson found it laughable that the pompous idiot had put himself in charge of the platoon when he didn't even have any professional military experience. Knowing Mainwaring as he did, it was more than likely he only made himself captain primarily because he felt it made him feel important. Wilson knew he was being unfair since Mainwaring did care about everyone under his command.
But Wilson was not enjoying his current job; he had been putting off working on the hand grenades for a while now, going off and doing over tasks and chores with the others. Today, Mainwaring had gone off with the platoon to bring back survivors from a U-boat sinking; the platoon was going to be guarding the German sailors until they could be taken on as formal POWs, but he had pushed Wilson into a corner to prime the hand grenades with their detonators.
"War is awfully dangerous, Wilson," Mainwaring had retorted to his excuse of the grenades being dangerous, but it had never occurred to ask why he refused to touch them. Still, he had made a good point, and truthfully Wilson had run out of excuses.
"Alright you guys," a loud exaggerated American-accented voice broke through his thoughts as he was starting work, making him jump, and he turned about in alarm and watched as Frank Pike grabbed a grenade off the desk, making a show of pulling the pin out, "this is a showdown; share this pineapple between you!"
"Frank, Frank, for heaven's sake!" Wilson's voice rose as he struggled to get the young kid to stop, even as he pretended to bowl the grenade towards imaginary enemies. "Frank put that thing down."
"What?" Frank asked, gazing at him with that wide-eyed innocence which said he was nothing more than a coddled man-child. "They do call them pineapples, those Chicago gangsters. I saw it in that film, Scarface. Paul Mooney."
Wilson, who'd been face palming, and trying to exorcise those horrible images of those soldiers he had commanded in France being blown to bits by grenades, snapped as he struggled to resist the urge to actually smack the boy and make him see the world wasn't a great big movie - not for the first time, he wished Mavis hadn't coddled Frank to the point where he couldn't tell reality from fiction, "I don't care what they're called, they're very, very dangerous."
"These aren't," to Wilson's horror, Frank took off the top of the grenade he was holding in his hands and showed him the insides, "Look, they haven't got any detonators. Look, you can see right through them." When he lifted it to his eye to see through, Wilson was sure his heart rate was going to shoot up.
"No, no no, please," Wilson covered his face to stop looking at the bomb, cursing Mainwaring vividly in his head, his mind churning up some very colourful and creative French curses; why, of all of the platoon, did the idiot select Frank to help him with this task? Why not ask Frazier or Walker? They had heads and brains screwed in.
"Shall I get them?" Frank eagerly walked around the desk to the cabinet where the detonators were being kept.
"No," Wilson quickly, "stay where you are, Frank," he was pleased when Frank stopped, "I will get them. This is very, very dangerous, this," he opened the cabinet door and found the box where the grenades' detonators were being kept in. "Awfully tricky."
"Now," he went on, hesitantly picking up one of the boxes and opening the top. As he looked at the detonators, he felt his heart rate soar in terror before he realised there were only two inside. "Oh, there's only two in that one," he said and put the lid back on, and then put the box back.
"There's another box at the back there," Frank began reaching eagerly for it, "let me-."
Vivid images of Frank with a live hand grenade and lobbing it as he had before, thinking nothing bad would happen, only to find some of the others in the platoon injured or dead filled Wilson's head, and he quickly shoved Frank back. "Just stand back, and don't touch anything!" Wilson caught sight of Frank's confused scrunched-up face, but he put it out of his mind for now, as he decided to get this over and done with quickly, just to get Mainwaring off his back.
"Dummy primers for training purposes only," Wilson read off the top of the box as he realised there was something written on its top.
Pike was reading it too. "Dummy detonators aren't any good, are they?" He asked, unaware that an idea had sparked in Wilson's mind. "They've got to be the real thing. Look, there's-."
"Just a minute!" Wilson injected some real anger into his voice to make Frank back off, but at the same time, he pushed him away so he wouldn't get hurt. "Just a minute, Just a minute. How would it be different if we put these dummies into the grenades instead of the real thing?" He smiled as the idea entered his mind.
He doubted the German sailors would be a problem, and even if they were they could still change over one of the pins for the real thing; no problem. But it would assuage his worries about the bombs.
"Mr Mainwaring said they've got to be ready for instant use. What if the Germans came along?" Frank asked.
Wilson wasn't worried. German parachutists would be more worried about guns, bullets, and grenades after that. And besides it wasn't a long job to fit in the pin.
"Well, we can soon change them around, it will only take a minute; we can get it down by the time the bells stopped ringing."
"I can't help thinking he'd be awfully cross if he finds out."
"Well, I can't help thinking he'd be a lot crosser if we all get blown up. Now, come on," Wilson took the box full of dummy detonators, and he took them to the desk and closed the cabinet.
"Dummy detonators," Frank grumbled, but he did as he was told.
Frank clearly did not like the deception, but Wilson didn't care; as far as he was concerned, he had put himself at ease.