Backyard Adventures: The Great Escape Part 2

It was a submachine gun; light in the hand and touting an impressive 500 rounds per minute.  With black plastic cold as real steel, a blazing orange barrel that moved and made sound when you pulled the trigger, and a red light adorning the tip of the muzzle that would flash in time with the realistic recoil. Its status on the backyard battlefield was unmatched. Once, Sargent Steel took the whole of occupied Normandy with nothing but that perfect piece of childhood armament and his warrior spirit. It was Zeus’ lightning bolt, Thor’s hammer, and Mikey’s nun-chucks all combined into one piece of legendary weaponry. And the guard outside prisoner barracks #21 was holding it.

“Where are we with the plan?”  I said to a group of POWs as we huddled in a tight circle inside our prison bunkhouse.

Sargent Steel had just been hauled back to the carport confines of barracks #21, strawberry soda still fizzing on my shirt. The interrogation that I had just endured left me tattered and beaten, but it had also served its purpose.

“Doc hasn’t returned yet, but the boys on latrine duty said they saw him enter without incident.”

Corporal Doc Nowak was my stuffed Teddy bear and a core member of my GI squad. Small, with red and black patchwork fabric that I had decided was his camouflage, Doc was a perfect agent for subterfuge. He was so good at sneaking around, in fact, that he had actually crept into Sargent Steel’s POW camp to assist in the escape. Now, with my interrogation acting as the diversion, he had stealthily slipped through a window and into the Gestapo officer’s personal quarters.

“Good,” I said resolutely.  “The moment he brings us those keys we strike. Got it?”

Backyard Adventures: The Great Escape Part 1

“Steel, Sergeant, United States Army, 3-44-44-33.”

I sat with my back against the concrete wall behind my family’s car port; my arms stretched out and held by imaginary chains. Hid from the world, and more importantly from my mother thanks to the large tree that blocked the kitchen window from the backyard, I underwent torturous interrogations. Only three days prior my grizzled World War II persona had been captured following a disastrous trampoline drop behind enemy lines, and now, locked in a dark room deep within a Nazi POW camp, I was paying the price.  

“Uuse zee metal pipe. This time akross zee face.”

A uniformed guard wearing the dual lightning bolt patch of the SS obeyed the order. He walked slowly to a nearby table, picked up an old copper pipe from an array of tools, needles, and knifes and then, facing me again, raised his arm to attack.

I smiled and laughed, “Ha! You think I’ve never been beaten before? Never tortured?”

Down came the copper pipe striking me flush against the cheek. Pain seared from loosened teeth and a lightly fractured jaw, but I only laughed again and raised an eyebrow to the Gestapo officer performing the interrogation. “Where’d you find this guy, the flag corps?” 

Class Gives Me Gas

I had been sitting in the same chair for two hours, and I was only two thirds of the way through my once a week Intro to American History class. The gas pains in my gut were growing stronger and I knew that if the professor didn’t grant us a break soon that my delicate 18 year old frame would explode outward into a giant skin-ball before retracting into a black hole with my navel as the epicenter.

Fifteen more minutes passed and still no break. I only had to hold on for another forty five minutes, but the building pressure inside was starting to make me twitch with uncontrollable spats of seizure. My choices were limited—do the unthinkable and pass gas in class or die. I was young, only a freshman, so for me the choice was clear.

“I got this” I thought, “I’ve done it before. Junior year of high school, third period chemistry, blamed it on spilled sulfur. Just relax and let it happen. Wait till the pressure subsides, give it an exit strategy, and don’t interfere. It’s as simple as that.”