17 July 1917 11 Squadron R.F.C. La Bellevue, France
(continued)
2nd Lt. Reginald Harrington, as fate would have it, had been a classmate of Frederick’s at Charterhouse School. His impeccable timing at providing the perfect nickname for Abbott, unintentional as it was, had made him an immediate hit with the flyers of 11 Squadron. And that night during the celebrations he continued that success by sharing stories of young Tiggy-Winkle’s school days.
“Has he told you about how he broke his leg during summer exercises?” Harrington asked while quaffing a beer treated him by the very fellow he was now lampooning.
“No, tell us!”, the men shouted.
“Oh it’s a corker!” Reggie chuckled as he launched into the tale. “So there we are down in East Sussex, the junior OTCs from the various schools all competing and such, jolly good fun really, and we’re about to run the obstacle circuit for the first time. Poor Tiggy has pulled lead position, and there he is at the head of the queue looking totally lost – I’m sure you all know the look by now.”
A round of agreement rose from the men while Frederick flashed his endearing, toothy grin and shook his head.
“Right! So off we go, with the drill sergeants stationed at the tricky spots along the course to give us the direction and encouragement as only their kind can, and it all starts out fairly well.
‘Scramble up over that rock pile and be quick about it!’, and up and over goes our Tiggy.
‘On your belly and crawl under the wire PDQ, and keep your arse down!', and Tiggy does just that.
Then we reach the bit where the sergeant tells us to run like hell and jump. The thing was, on this particular course, where the ditch was that we were to jump across, just off to the side of it, there was also a bit of a cliff.”
“Oh God no, tell us he didn’t!”
“Oh yes, he did!” Reggie laughed.
“Yes, yes I did”, Frederick agreed heartily as he downed a shot of scotch.
The room erupted into gales of laughter.
Harrington waited for things to quiet back down and continued. “Our good old Tiggy here, ever ready to do as he’s told, and failing completely to notice the trampled grass leading off towards the ditch, stares at the edge of that damned cliff twenty-some feet in front of him, and he hesitates. The sergeant yells, ‘I said run and jump it, ya great lump, or do ya need a prod!’. So he screws up his courage and off he goes, fast as those long legs of his will carry him, straight at the abyss. By the time the now-terrified sergeant is screaming ‘Christ lad, the ditch, not the bloody cliff!’, it’s too late, Tiggy’s already off the edge.”
Harrington pauses to toss back the shot that has just been brought him and while he does so Frederick interjects, “I should mention, for those of you who may not know, I’ve a keen interest in paleontology – fossils, dinosaurs – that sort of thing. I note this as it will become relevant in a moment when Reggie continues his ragging of me. Carry on old top.”
“Thank you, old top”, Harrington smiled as he slapped Frederick’s shoulder. “Yes, right, so off he goes, and we’re all thinking the worst as we run to the edge to see. But the gods smiled on old Tiggy that day, it was only about fifteen feet to the bottom, and on the way down he’d passed through a bramble which slowed his descent. So there he was, laying at the bottom, battered and bruised, with bits of bramble sticking out of him, and the sergeant, who is now looking far more angry than terrified, yells down, ‘You alright, Abbott?’ And Tiggy here, who’s fumbling about with some rocks he’s found next to him, shouts back up, ‘Some lovely trilobites down here, they’ll be a spiffing addition to my collection’. And the sergeant is now hopping mad, face red as a beet, and he shouts ‘What the hell you on about, Abbott, did you crack your bleedin’ skull?!’ And our Tiggy here looks up at the fellow peering over the edge at him and says, ‘No Sergeant, I believe it’s my leg, the left one has a bit of an extra bend it didn’t have when I was up there.’ We all nearly fell off the edge ourselves from the laughter. The sergeant never did find the humour in it though, did he Tiggy.”
“No Reggie, he never did”, Frederick smiled as he handed his old Carthusian chum yet another shot.
By this point every man in the mess was in stitches, some were literally holding their sides from the aching, others were laughing so hard they were in tears. It would prove to be an epically marvelous evening, and a very, very squiffy one.
