THE DRAWERS OF DOOM

The late afternoon was sunny and the fields agreeably scented to Farmer Drubbins as he lolled on the five barred gate that overlooked the Straits of Dover. He gazed out towards France and wondered at the Miracle of Dunkirk and how so many French and British soldiers had been plucked to the safety of the home shores where they would eventually become available once again to carry the fight to the enemy.

Since then, things had calmed down in the air to the extent that many even thought this might be the countdown to a cessation of hostilities.
Only some air firing practice had been going on just off the North Foreland during the past few days and had been the sole attraction to those who paid any interest to what might be happening in the mid-summer sky.
The distant rattle of machine-gun fire was too far out to sea for HWH Squadron's wheeling and diving maneouvres to be discerned but eventually a distinct hum could be identified as the engine of an approaching aircraft.

Drubbins carried on chewing through his corn stalk as the approaching aircraft gradually became visible. Yes...it was a similar type he had spotted over the last few days...a target tug! A prolonged search through his copy of Aircraft Identification by Ivor Goodview had helped him to put a name to it. The Blackburn Skua, with highly noticeable yellow and black diagonal stripes roared overhead as the engine battled against the inherent drag of the airframe and the added encumbrance of some strange voluminous bag-like object. To his consternation and concern it appeared to be dragging a hugh pair of bullet-riddled red flannel drawers. He took several unsteady steps back and looked on in awe as the pilot released the drag inducing pantaloons which drifted down to alight near the the pig-dung heap.

Drubbins moved forward in determined fashion with every intention of securing this unusual prize for his very own. As he retrieved the huge baggy garment he noted that certain faces which he readily recognized from the daily papers, were embroidered and stitched into the copious folds of the heavy duty Russian burlap.
'Let's see now', he muttered to himself, 'that's Molotov, and Stalin, Vishinsky, Lenin'...and there were others of the Soviet Central Committee featured thereon. He quickly dismissed any suggestion that a surfeit of pig-sty methane had befuddled his senses. This was real!

'Vit ez yuz d'win - thez drawz iz min?!' - it enquired.
Drubbins turned to confront a powerful looking woman(?) who reminded him of a well known trade mark illustration for a certain type of pork luncheon meat. Olga held up the shredded, smouldering drawers and observed Drubbins through a particularly large hole in the reinforced seat - and it had not been made by bullets... The sh*te on his boots was fighting a losing battle against her after shave.
'Vot for zis yu du', she further enquired but more threateningly. Before he could answer, she seized him in a powerful embrace.
'Yu nitty, nitty, nitty, nitty, nitty boy!' With each 'nitty' she accentuated the word by tearing off a piece of his clothing until he stood there quaking in his Land Army standard issue jockstrap and crap laden Dunlop wellingtons.

Many a time Drubbins had wiled away the odd hours by observing his precious prize porkers and watched them participating in that essential activity which would guarantee a continuous supply of piglets for his successful business. This night however, it would be the pigs who would be observing, dispassionately, the antics of these human-kind. Two steaming mounds of perspiring, sweaty flesh, rolling and groaning in the straw next to the silage pit.

It would be several days before Horace Cyril Nicodemus Drubbins was to be seen hobbling around the farm, after which, Olga would begin a relentless search for a certain washing-line thief. One from distant North Carolina with a liking for Spam...