My Great Grandfather Malcolm
Malcolm and the Rats
Background to the story
At fifteen or sixteen my great grandfather was one of the younger service members to fight for the crown in WW1 – having not been sufficiently challenged about his age when he lied about it on the volunteer form. He served in the navy and his sole job throughout the war was to look after this one gun. Cleaning, maintenance and firing in battle was his job. He said that he was everywhere that there was a war except Australia. He almost made it to Australia but a couple days before he was to depart for Australia the gun was moved to another ship – and being joined at the hip with his gun he had to move ships to. I have unsuccessfully searched trying to find the name of the ships that he served on. A cherished family heirloom is the marked “Top secret” user manual for the gun.
My great grandfather was a great story teller. He told stories and everybody listened. He sat in a corner on a chair and a dozen or so other people would be facing him listening (And I assume everybody slowly getting drunk). It was like a Robin Williams comedy concert in an out port living room with a dozen or so people in the audience. There was a couch in the opposite corner and I would be lied down asleep, bored or paying attention also. I would have been around five or six years old. He often told war stories with such excitement that you felt that going to war was a fun exciting adventure that you wish that you could go on to. There were stories about Japanese POWs but a main theme throughout the stories involved nurses. Unfortunately I don’t remember any of the stories but my mother tells me that my Great Grandmother would be a bit miffed at the nurses stories. I don’t remember that but any details of what was surely often of a sexually explicit nature to the stories told among a bunch of half drunk men would have been lost on a five year old.
For some reason one wartime story sticks with me. My mothers version of the story involves alcohol rather than food – and he could well have said “Rum and food rations”, being older and knowing how alcohol is used and abused that stuck with her more. In any event he probably told the story more than once. I didn’t see much of my great grandfather in my teenage years and this story is pretty much my best memory of him.
MALCOLM RIDS THE SHIP OF RATS
The ship that he served on (Like most ships) was overrun with rats. Of course the pantry where the food is stored is the worst rodent infected area. My great grandfather Malcolm goes to the captain and explains that he is good at killing rats (I don’t remember how he was supposed to do that). It took some convincing but finally the captain agrees and gave him a key to the pantry so that he could prove his skill at killing rats. This was good because now having a key to the pantry (And a valid reason for at any time being there) he had access to all the food that he wanted anytime he wanted.
And as promised he was good at catching rats. Every day he would bring dead rats to show the captain so as to keep the captain happy about the job that he was doing (And of course to keep that treasured key to the pantry). Unfortunately he was a bit to good at killing rats and soon it was a lot harder to catch rats because there was very few of them left on the ship. He would surely lose his key if he stopped supplying the captain with his daily dose of rats. So what could he do? His trick was to keep the rats in as good a condition as possible for a few days and show the captain the same rats a few days in a row to convince the captain that he was indeed still catching lots of rats.
My grandfathers story telling skills and theatrics’s as he told the punch line would have been quite amusing.