General Compton Smyth and the Pea Shooter Brigade… Part Two

The Battle of Aver Wallop will not go into the annals of history as one of the great moments in British military history, and as is often the case, it all started with a minor skirmish, or mis-understanding.

General Compton Smyth addressed his rag tag band of troops in the courtyard of the smallholding the army had been bequeathed by an extremely bitter ex military man whose son chose cross dressing over a career running around in hobnail boots shooting at things.

“Men,” he began, “…we are at the cutting edge of military planning. We are here to do field trials of a new weapon…”
The Sergeant held up a little blue pill, which drew a giggle from Private Smith at the end of the six soldiers standing to attention.
“Sergeant Grimm!”
“Yes… General… Sir!”
“Take that man’s name and put him on peeling duties!”
“Yes… Sir!” Grimm replied running up to stand toe to toe with Private Smith, “NAME?”
“Smith… Sir!” replied Smith
“Stay behind after the parade, you pathetic excuse for a little man, you!”

Coming from the vertically challenged, if stocky and aggressive Sergeant, a height comment seemed to be a case of pots and kettles, but Smith knew better than to say so.
“Yes… Sir!”

The Sergeant then turned on his heels and ran back to the General’s side with unnecessarily tiny steps.
“Where was I?” the general mused, “Oh yes… Cutting edge! …We have to devise the most accurate method of delivering the weapon into the mouth of our opponents. So we shall be using the following in our field trials…Sergeant!”
“Sir!”

The sergeant ran using the same tiny steps that he’d used earlier to run across in front of the general to a box on a trestle table standing to one side. He reached inside the box and then thrust his hand in the air holding a child’s catapult toy.
“Catapult!” he shouted.

He slammed the toy alongside the box on the table and thrust his hand back inside, rummaging purposefully, before thrusting it once more over his head holding a modified pub dart.
“Dart!” he shouted.

He slammed the dart alongside the box and once again rummaged about inside to grab the pea shooter and thrust this above his head.
“Pea Shooter!”

As he reached back into the box there was a snigger from the rank of six soldiers, which fell silent as the Sergeant looked up to scan the line in search of a culprit. His gaze then returned to the box where he retrieved the last item and thrust that above his head…
“…Cupcake!”

This was too much for the six young squaddies, who burst out into uncontrollable laughter and the Sergeant running over to bellow at them only seemed to make it worse, so the soldiers were sent to the galley to do peeling duty while the General and Sergeant returned to the office to discuss the next days training.

The next few weeks were spent experimenting with the various methods of “delivering” the weapon.

Cookery classes tried putting Viagra tablets in various cakes and meals to see how the cooking affected the efficiency of the drug. The squaddies would then eat the experimental recipes and standing in a line to have the results measured by the sergeant. No-one had a clue how this information could be turned into field trials against a regular army unit, let alone the nutters from the Parachute Regiment or the SAS. Stopping in the heat of battle for cupcakes with the enemy wasn’t an option, so they concentrated for now on finding the ultimate recipes.

The catapults and various other sling shots proved too inaccurate. You could splatter someone with tablets, which would sting a bit, but hardly stop them coming at you!

Darts were more effective as darts, which they found made an interesting weapon in its own right. Efforts to refine the Viagra into liquid form to create poison darts, of sorts, proved too technical for the very much less than technical squaddies to master.

The pea shooters and various other blow pipes proved both more accurate and effective, but only at close range. But the young soldiers became quite proficient, which gave the Sergeant and General heart.


An opportunity to test the cakes in field trials of sorts came about when Private Davidson, who was somewhat too effeminate for Sergeant Grimm’s comfort, noticed the upcoming village fete had various cake making and pie competitions.

The general thought this was a wonderful idea, and so the squaddies were all ordered to prepare their best cake and pie dishes. Even Sergeant Grimm donned an apron and made some surprisingly good looking fairy cakes.

To avert suspicion the soldiers donned civilian clothes and blend in with the real villagers on the day of the fete and shuffled in to the food judging tent at sporadic intervals so they wouldn’t appear to be together as a group, a tactic that hadn’t altogether been successful as over the course of the day they gradually gravitated together.

Only one of the brigade wasn’t present, the sergeant apoplectic having discovered one of his Viagra laced fairy cakes was missing lined the squaddies up and Private Simpson clearly stood out as the guilty party, so was left behind on sentry duty as punishment.

They had entered several categories from steak and kidney pies, to sausage rolls apple pies and finally Sergeant Grimm’s fairy cakes, so they would be able to gauge the effects of the Viagra across various different recipes.

There were three judges in the food competition. The vicar represented the establishment, while Gladys Guttersnipe who ran the local tea shop provided the culinary expertise and guest judge for this year was Ida T. Heurtze, the internationally regarded author of smut who was in the village for a book signing promotion of her new book “The Young Wife.”

There was already tension in the air with Mary Akroyd, landlady of the Hound and Fox bitter that her culinary rival Gladys Guttersnipe had been chosen for the judging panel and not her, so the vicar and Ida had been last minute additions to the panel to ensure neutrality.

Neutrality was not a great concern to General Compton Smyth and his soldiers, but they did find themselves caught in the middle of the feud when Private Adams’ Sausage rolls beat those of Gladys in that particular category, leading to a challenge being lodged and the judges having to re-do the tasting, and thus getting a double dose of the private’s sausage rolls.

In spite of the protests it was declared by the remaining two judges that the sausage rolls made by Private Adams really had stood out. Unfortunately for the vicar, having eaten them on top of the laced pies and cakes entered by the other soldiers, he was standing out too, and getting an earful from Mrs Vicar who wrongly assumed it was the attractive and racy authoress having brought on his uncontrollable erection.

The other judges didn’t get off Scot free, Gladys suffering hot flushes while Ida found herself feeling strangely amorous.

Private Adams may have been the only member of the brigade to win a prize, but as the vicar was repeatedly hit over the head with a handbag wielded by his wife at the opposite end of the beer tent, General Compton Smyth rewarded his men with a pint of Ferret Ale and declared their mission in the cake competition a complete success.

Their quiet celebration in the beer tent was interrupted by a loud roar coming from the show field where the young farmers had just beaten the local firemen in the annual tug of war competition to leave them undefeated in three years and cocky with it.

Surveying the victory scene Sergeant Grimm and the General gave one another a knowing nod before entering their civilian dressed men as last minute challengers, much to the delight of the majority who were sick of the boastful young farmers never letting anyone forget who the champions were.

Grimm disappeared suspiciously, as the squaddies dug in at the opposite end to their competition.

Being well versed in both technique and burley to boot the young farmers were easily winning when Grimm returned carrying a tray covered in a tea towel, just in time to see the brigade routed.

After a nod from the General, Sergeant Grimm showed there were no hard feelings, whipping away the tea towel to reveal a plate festooned with his fairy cakes, enthusiastically snaffled up by the young farmers.

The effects were pretty rapid with the heart rates already raised with the effort put into taking the strain amplifying the effects of the Viagra. By the time the competition began again the farmers, to a man were somewhat compromised by their erections and unable to put any real effort into the task in hand.

One all and the soldiers were confident going into the decider.

Still suffering the effects of the Viagra, which was really kicking in by now the third tug of war was a complete victory for the squaddies, with the farmers dragged through the mud until they reached solid ground where the lead man’s natural anchor dug in and stopped them.

If the agony faced by the lead man as his penis was ploughed into the field was bad it was nothing compared with the second to last man who fell forward followed closely by the anchorman. The burley anchor was big in more ways than one and his huge erection pushed into the arse of his team mate through his shorts.

The man on the receiving end already embarrassed by his own erection flew into a terrible rage as they finally untangled themselves and a fist fight ensued between the members of the losing team.

It made for a pretty pathetic and funny site and their anger was quickly replaced by embarrassment as the watching crowd all broke down laughing because their erect penises were still pushing their shorts out like tent poles.

The general and sergeant stood to one side as the mayhem ensued, their conversation centred on the effectiveness of the Viagra in nullifying the fighting ability and tug of war annihilation of the young spud monkeys.

The local paper who were there to cover the fete got a brilliant photo of the mud splattered young farmers fighting among themselves and the story a week later read “Sword Fight at The Aver Wallop Coral!”


Although never attributed to the General and his Pea Shooter Brigade, this was definitely the opening skirmish of the battle that was about to ensue.

To Be Continued.....





The Young Wife by Ida T. Heurtze will be published soon. In the meantime please do check out the other titles I have published including my comedy novel, Religious Pursuits by Neil Winnington which can all be found on Amazon.




Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
ISBN 1470071347

Sergeant Goode is close to his retirement, a situation irritating him enough before a young pen pusher without any respect for village life had been sent to get to know the local patch.

When his girlfriend falls fatally during a row, blind panic sets in and Goode makes a hasty exit, triggering a sequence of events which would see a simple accident become the centre of a major police investigation quickly spiralling out of control.

Starting with a detective sergeant with a desire to prove his theory that all serious crime can be closely linked to the occult, the villagers, all hiding secrets of varying degrees set up a fake occult meeting complete with a frozen chicken as the animal sacrifice.

With a discredited former tabloid journalist, hungry to find the big story that would bring him back into the Fleet Street fold, a village gossip with a murky war-time secret desperate to hide her true identity, and a group of investigators, sent to discredit the local Reverend and protect the church’s reputation, all combined to escalate the situation further, this sleepy Devon village soon becomes the centre of a national media scandal.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, a hostage situation draws in even more police, and even a squad of soldiers led by a battle hungry sergeant with a massive chip on his shoulder, and the story takes on a final twist, before culminating in a car chase like no other and a cliff hanger end

Available now in Paperback from...
Createspace
https://www.createspace.com/3797405

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