My Uncle Norm was a war hero. Well, that’s what he told me anyway.
He said he had trudged through the hot jungles in Nam.
I didn’t know where Nam was. I knew it wasn’t near Southport where we lived. I once tried to find it on the bus timetable my dad kept in the sideboard.
Uncle Norm liked to talk. He didn’t mind who he talked to. He would sit on a bench in Lord Street and talk to anybody as they walked by.
I was eight years old when he told me about Nam. They had to use big knives to cut away the bushes so they could get at the Kong. The Kong were the bad people. The ones we were fighting. I asked him if that was like the Germans and English? I understood that from the films we saw at the pictures. Uncle Norm said it wasn’t like the Germans and English at all, but when I asked why he rubbed the side of his nose and hinted, ‘It’s too terrible to talk about.’
Uncle Norm said he killed hundreds of Kong with a machinegun when they attacked his troops. He held an imaginary gun to his side and imitated the sound of bullets: just like me and my pals when we played Germans and English.
I liked Uncle Norm and was sad when he stepped in front of a lorry and was killed. ‘He didn’t have the sense he was born with,’ mum said.
Click here for more war stories
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 