THE CLOCK

          "Tick f----n tock, do we ave tu listen tu that f----n' thing every f-----n' day?" moaned one bloke
        who was laid on his bunk, trying to read.
          "Shut yer moanin, yu miserable turd," said a voice from behind another bunk.
          I was laid on my bunk and listening to this banter and having a quiet chuckle to myself.
          I had made a model boat in one camp, probably just because there was a pond to sail a boat on.
        Now I had made a clock, because it gave me something to do.
          At first no one took any notice of me metal bashing. I would get an empty tin, and with a small piece
        of sharpened metal bar and with another metal bar as a hammer, I would cut the tin and make cooking trays. So if one of our lads, or any of the others needed a tray, I would make one.
          We got the odd bloke would wander into our barrack room--"Who s the bloke as makes tin trays?"
        they would inquire. And to a chorus of "Oh God, not agin" and "Bang, bang, f----n bang why don' yu f---koff?", the bloke would approach and with a nod say "Hi, d'yu reckon yu cud mek me a tray hap n so ah cud cook me spuds en et? Ah've ony got two fags (cigarettes)," This was said all in one breath, I think maybe so I couldn t say "no" before he d finished talking. But I would have made him one for nothing if he had no fags. I was just glad I had the knack to make things, but the two fags were as good as money, well better because money had no value in a POW camp, and some blokes were not as free and easy as I was. So I said I usually charge four fags for a tin tray. He looked disappointed and mumbled, "Shit, Ah ve on y got two." So seeing he was genuine, I said "Okay, you keep one fag and give me one and I ll make your tray."
          For a while I lay on my bunk and found myself analysing the conversation that from time to time
        would float round the room or through the open window from blokes out side. One time I heard "We could start tomorrow," and it would fade as they moved away and I thought, yeah, walls have ears, you never know who is listening. Another time: "I ll swap you this for two of those, they are easier to carry when we go," and I thought why doesn t he borrow Jerry's camp speakers and let every bugger in the camp know?
          "What time is it?" asked a voice, just four little words, but the response some times to a simple
        question could bring the house down. Trouble was most blokes with nothing to do all day would lay on their bunks, and if some one was thinking fondly about his sweetheart who would be waiting for him when he got home, yuck, yuck, clean pinny on, and hair permed, cherry lips, and loads of red roses growing round the front door, get the picture, when suddenly this coarse voice comes up with "Wot toime eset then?" Our mate who had just been mentally adjusting his tie and wetting his lips with his tongue in anticipation of a smacker on the gob replies with, "'Ow the f--k should Oi know, bleed n Big Ben Oi ain t!"
          As this bit of enlightening info permeated most brains in the area, some one would start to chant
        "why did yu flog yu watch, why did yu flog yu watch, knees up knees up, don t get the breeze up, if I catch you bending I ll saw yu legs right off, knees up, knees up, why did yu flog yu watch," and soon every one would join in. Some times the guard on the wire would pause in his walk to the next tower and he would look toward our barracks and slowly shake his head. One could almost hear him thinking, what am I doing here watching a load of idiots from England singing their heads off. What have they got to sing about? They are the prisoners and singing, and I m out here and as soon as it pisses down I get wet through while they sit by a nice warm stove.
          Well we had a picture of a scantily dressed girl on the brickwork but it was a cover for a map on the
        reverse side. We also had a notice board, and to my mind all that was missing was a clock.
          I suddenly thought, what a challenge, make a clock with nothing more than an old hacksaw blade
        (nicked from a pub tool shed) with the back of the blade sharpened and some cloth and string wrapped round it. It could cut metal and whittle wood so there was no way I would part with it. So armed with my tool kit, to whit, one old hacksaw blade, one iron bar (my hammer) and a sharp nail, ground down on cement to make it a chisel, I began collecting various tins.
          The bloke in the next bed, noticing all the tins under my bunk saw me stash two more, and resting
        the book he had been reading on his chest, he leaned over and whispered "yu will need some one to navigate fer yu, I can navigate good." And reaching up he turned his battledress so I could see the N in the circle and half a bird's wing above the left pocket, so he was a navigator in the R.A.F.
          I said, "What are you whispering for?", and he did a quick look left, then right, and screwed his face
        up as he hunched his shoulders and whispered, "shssssssssssssssh, I know what you are going to build."
          I asked "Who told you?", and again the finger upright on the mouth. "Not so loud, every bugger will
        want to come with us!"
          I said, "What the hell are yu burbling about?"
          Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up. I was sleeping near a nutter, he could
        think I was a Jerry in the night and cut my throat. I gotta move.
          "We got to save grub up tu take wi us." He was still in a fantasy world, what stupid book was he
        reading? God, Treasure Island.
          "Do you need a hand to build it?"
          "Build what?"
          "The submarine"
          "What submarine? I m building a clock!"
          A long silence, and I could imagine someone putting the corner of a sheet of blotting paper on an ink
        blob and watching the ink as it crawled up the paper. His brain was doing just that, because it just looked like buying a pound of bacon, you watch the needle on the scales sweep round, then crawl to the correct weight. So it was with his face as the information registered and the look on his face changed and a faraway look took its place. He picked up his book again and turning his back on me, he lay and read his book. This bloke was ready for home.
          I started work on my clock and came across problems straight away. There was no way to put a
        spindle through a tin lid and fit another tin lid on the same spindle and drive both, because the lid has no grip on the spindle. Since I had no welding gear I had to sit and think about it. Now I came up against lots of problems but I will bypass most, otherwise this could get suddenly boring, but this spindle and lid problem had to be solved, or no clock. It was tedious but it worked some thing like this: I cut a cross in the center of each lid, then hammered the four triangles outward. Then I did ditto to another lid. Then I put them face to face and rivetted them together using small cut down nails. Next I removed the rims, then, carefully measuring, I cut teeth, and I now had a large gear wheel. Now I got a bit of wood and shaved it square until it fit into the square of the wheel, then I did ditto to a smaller wheel and mounted it to the same shaft. The wooden center was then removed and cut length ways and a red hot nail was laid to make half a groove in the wood. The same was done to the other half and when put together there was a clean straight hole through the wood. When it was assembled I had a spindle bound tight with cotton and laquered with a big cog wheel about four inches across and a little cog about 1 inch across. I made three like this, and one with a big cog only but with a drum to accept the string with a weight to drive the clock. The escape wheel was different, in that each tooth had to be shaped to push the pendulum at the end of its swing.
          A huge cheer went up as we mounted the clock, not because we now had a time piece, but to quote
        one bloke, ":Thank f--k fer that--now mebbe we can ger a bit o piece an quiet in the afternoons."
          Well it had taken me off and on about two months, and with all the noise complaints I had moved
        into the wash house to make my clock. Let s face it it s not every day some one makes a clock that keeps perfect time with just a hack saw blade and tin, not forgetting a bit of wood and nails as spindles.
          For what it is worth by the way we had an air raid one night and the clock fell off the wall due to
        vibrations of the bombing, and we thought we had an unexploded bomb in our barracks until some-one pointed out the clock had fallen off its nail. The big thump was the bucket of concrete needed to drive the clock as it hit the wooden barracks floor.