Enclosed is a picture of myself on the left, along with my brother and sister in 1961. War Games On Pennywell Road My blood raced as I charged down the hill, firing wildly at the soldier partially hidden in the tall grass. Suddenly, two shots rang out, and I felt the impact as the bullets tore deep inside my chest. Dropping my rifle, I screamed in agony as my hands instinctively covered the wounds and I pitched headfirst down the steep embankment. Over and over I rolled, the wild flowers and blades of grass slashing my face, until I came to rest just a few feet in front of the soldier. "Not bad, Bennett, you might win." The game was called "fall the best," and it was one of our favourites. Whoever dramatically fell the best, got the rifle and the chance to shoot all his friends as they attacked down the hill. I grew up in an era not long removed from the Second World War. We read comics that had American heroes battling the Nazis, and watched Mickey Mouse outwitting the Japanese on Saturday morning cartoons. The early sixties was at the height of the Cold War, and it was always with trepidation that I listened to the practice runs of the air-raid siren, perched high on a pole on Adam's Ave. in St. John's. It was against this backdrop of military atmosphere that we practiced the art of childhood wargames. As unbelievable as it sounds now, rock fights were a common occurrence. One day, a good friend and myself paired off; he behind a building and I behind a fence. He was able to escape my long-distance volleys by simply jumping behind the building. To outwit him, I let fly with a nice-size rock when he was still in hiding, and as he poked his head out, the rock struck him square between the eyes. With blood dripping, and in howls of pain, he took off home. Most of our weapons were homemade. Thick, curved branches were cut from trees, bent slightly and strung for bows. Arrows were made from long straight twigs with bottle caps fastened around the top for added weight. Once I had a store-bought set, and to test its accuracy, my friend picked it up, and delivered an arrow to the side of his brother's head. Serious damage was avoided, but I still remember Kenny laughing heartily as his brother ran down the road, hands up to his head and shrieking in pain. Slingshots were formed from strong y-shaped branches. Rubber tubing was cut from our bicycle tires and attached to the wood. Part of a shoe tongue formed the pouch, into which a marble-sized rock would fit. These were particularly effective weapons, and a window could be broken from a considerable distance. When we played knights of old, the metal lids of garbage cans, with the handle in the middle, became the perfect shields. Swords were made from pointed lengths of wood, and we would smash them down on our opponent's shield, and then try to spear them in the guts. Peaguns or "blowguns" were fashioned from the wild bamboo plant that grows in abundance in St. John's. The small white beans from our mothers' kitchens were used as ammunition. They could be fired quite a distance, but you had to be careful when taking a big breath of air lest the bean was inadvertently sucked down your throat. Some of the guys could put several beans in their mouth, manoeuvre them with their tongue and fire in machine-gun fashion. We loved to play "horse and rider." One person would ride on his partner's back and they would charge and smash into everybody else, trying to knock them down. With four or five sets of horse and rider attacking each other, you could often nail someone from behind, sending horse and rider face first into the grass. Firecrackers were our high-tech weapons of mass destruction. It was with delightful anticipation that we would walk from our homes on Pennywell Rd. to the store on Mayor Ave., which sold these little bombs. Then it was up to the Ayre Athletic grounds, away from our parents' prying eyes, to indulge in modern warfare. The wick had a three-second burn, so you had to act quickly and toss them at your friends. At times they would explode in your fingers, and the effect was a sharp ringing in your ears and slightly singed fingers. Once I crept up behind my friend sitting in the bleachers, put a large firecracker behind his back and blew a hole the size of a small plate in his new windbreaker. During the summer when we visited our grandmother in Blackhead, CBN, we would scoop out the codlivers from the barrels on the wharf, throw them on the splitting table and stick in the firecrackers. You had to duck low as the codlivers exploded into a thousand pieces. We would also throw a firecracker into the stomach of a sculpin, and watch the smoke come out of its gills. During the winter, snowball fights were especially enjoyable. We would divide into two opposing forces and each build a snow fort about 40 feet apart. We would hunker down behind the wall and pop up to fire a volley at the enemy. We used three types of armaments for this. The first was a bowling-ball-size snowball, which we would toss high in the air and hopefully land on the heads of the other fort's occupants as they huddled down behind their fort. Secondly, we used ice balls to penetrate the walls of the fort. These were snowballs made the previous day and frozen overnight, buried in the snow. They were rock hard and lethal. Our third projector was the plain old snowball. A full facial hit was especially satisfying because of the immediate pain and immobility it rendered the victim. After we tired of throwing snowballs, the battle usually ended with a direct frontal charge and the destruction of the enemy fort. At Christmas we would usually receive some type of gun, rifle or toy soldiers, which we would glorify in our imaginary games of gunfights and battles. Today, "political correctness" frowns on giving a young boy a toy gun. Oh, but how we reveled in the enjoyment of being Davy Crockett, or leading a charge of Apaches against the white man. We were doing what so many generations of young boys had done before us, delighting in our play and imagination. We eventually grew up, parted ways, started our own families and became law-abiding citizens. I ended up working as an LPN for the past 23 years, and am proud to say I never had the urge to hit any of my patients with a rock.   Submitted By: NULL