In the Mouth of the Wolf. Michael Morpurgo
That’s what they called you at school, you know, when you weren’t listening. “Big Feet”.’ You wriggled your own feet then, and said, ‘See those? Small feet, Francis. I always wanted them to be bigger, like yours. I think maybe we all have to get used to our own feet.’ This was my new brother, no longer little, a brother with a mind of his own, a wonderful man.
So you went your way, and I went mine. Neither you nor I wrote letters if we could help it. We met occasionally, awkwardly, at family gatherings which I never enjoyed. The family gloried in your success and would send me reviews from time to time. ‘Pieter Cammaerts is
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remarkable, a tour de force.’ ‘Pieter Cammaerts, a star in the making.’
And whilst you were gathering these accolades during that last spring and summer of peace, I was still trying to discover where my big feet might take me. You had always been so sure of yourself. You set out to be a great actor and that’s what you became. As for me, I found myself one day standing there in front of a class of forty children, trying to be a teacher. Teach and teach well, I thought, give the children the opportunities they deserve. That was the only way to make the world a better, more peaceful place.
You know me, Pieter, ever full of high-minded notions and pontifications. But these notions weren’t of much use to me in front of all those children, most of whom were not at all keen to learn. Being big and tall helped, I found. I frightened them at first. ‘Mr Giant’ they called me. ‘Big Feet’ too. I would sometimes hear a whispered chorus of ‘Fee fi fo fum’, when they saw me coming.
I learnt plenty from one or two other teachers at the
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school, Harry in particular. He taught me that you had
to be on their side, and they had to know it, that mutual respect and affection was the key. I was discovering for myself that I had in the class forty expectant faces gazing up at me, forty intellects waiting to be stimulated, forty hearts waiting to be moved to laughter or tears, through stories and poems and plays. I had to get to know what made each of them tick, and to do that I had to learn to listen to them, and understand them. They had to know they had a friend in me as well as a teacher.
I tried to pass on to them all the things I had loved as a child, all I had done with you and Papa in the Ardennes. I walked the river banks with them, looking for otters and herons and kingfishers, walked the wild woods when the bluebells were out, discovered foxholes with them, watched larks rising over the fields. It was quite unexpected, but I fell in love with teaching, and knew quickly I would make it my life.
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But much like you with your acting, Pieter, Adolf Hitler changed all that. He marched his armies into Poland, as you had said he would, bombed Warsaw. Still I hoped and believed there could be peace. Can you imagine? I saw what was happening, we all did. His tanks roared into Holland, through the Ardennes, through Papa’s forest, our forest, into our beloved Belgium.
You did what you said you would, left your toga behind in the theatre, and put on your blue RAF uniform instead. And you looked perfect in that part too. You were training for months somewhere up in Scotland, but you didn’t want to talk about it. All you said was that now you were a Sergeant Navigator you probably knew the stars better than I did.
We had a last Sunday lunch back at home with the family, you in your uniform. Then I walked you to the station and we waited for your train over a cup of tea. There was a silence between us, not because we were strangers – it was more a silence of foreboding. It was
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raining when the train came in. We held on to one another, neither of us wanting to let go. You went on waving from the train window for as long as you could see me. And that was that.
You went off west to join your bomber squadron in Cornwall, and I went off north to Lincolnshire, to work on a family farm. I had had to go before a tribunal to explain why I felt I would not and should not put on a uniform and fight in this war, or any war. They had listened grim-faced, told me I was wrong, but accepted my sincerity. I had to contribute to the war effort in other ways, they said. I would have to go to work on a farm. The nation needed food.
So I found myself milking cows, mucking them out, feeding pigs, mucking them out, feeding hens, mucking them out. Lots of mucking out. I loved the sheep best, especially lambing time. I drove the tractor, helped with the hay and straw harvest, dug up turnips and potatoes. I learnt more in a few months, Pieter, than I had in all my time in university. I grew fit and strong too, and that was to be important.
In the farmhouse I lived amongst fellow pacifists, all of us wanting to forget the war, but never being able to.
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