Biggles crossed the great divide and flew into the
unknown, or as was more commonly known - he broke into the Women's Auxiliary
Air Force dorm with a bottle of Irish whisky and an inclination that couldn’t
be scratched. He was cornered in an airing closet by major Daphne
Bodice-Splitter, whose double-barrelled name was the stuff of legends.
“Captain
Biggles!” she yelled as she surrounded him with two signals WAAFs armed with
fire extinguishers. “Put down lieutenant Higginbottom, she’s on active duty!”
Biggles and
Higginbottom collapsed in a puddle on the floor. Higginbottom tried to salute
but her hand was caught in Biggles’ flight suit and Biggles was upside down.
Biggles tried to stand up but couldn’t decide which direction that was and kept
sticking his head in a basket of unwashed nether garments and only succeeded in
covering his head in stockings and bras. Eventually they righted him, sat him
on a stool and demanded he explain his actions.
“Isn’t this
bomber command?” he looked about in drunken perplexity. “Could have sworn I had
a pre-flight briefing here today.”
“The only
briefs are on your head!” Daphne snapped.
“Odd looking
oxygen mask,” he held it up. Daphne grabbed one of the fire extinguishers and
hosed him down. “Crickey! It’s Flak!”
“Captain
Biggles explain yourself or I will call the sergeant-at-arms!” It was three in
the morning and major Daphne Bodice-Splitter was dressed in a
terry-towelling ensemble that left everything to the imagination. She was in no
mood for drunken airmen fossicking in her ironing room, and if he weren’t the
famous Biggles she would have shot him.
Blearily
Biggles waved his arms around and tried to hold the room up.
“It’s like
this,” he said and gave a three minute incoherent ramble about Mussolini not returning
his dress suit back in 43’, after he had had parachuted out over Rome during a
failed bombing run and gotten lost in the Colosseum for a week, finishing with,
“…it’s nothing like Three Coins in a Fountain with Audrey Hepburn – Audrey!” he
shrieked out.
Daphne blinked
several times and ordered him thrown out a window. Biggles landed in a
flowerbed before wandering off through the night haranguing several stop signs
he met on the way.
He woke up in
the morning with an Iraqi gardener poking him with a rake. The sun was shining,
the air was crisp with sand and Biggles had a headache that could have
threatened world peace if it ever escaped the confines of his ever-shrinking
brain.
“English,” the
Iraqi gardener poked him again with the rake, “are you ill?”
“Never better,”
Biggles stood to his feet and promptly fell over, this was followed by a brief
ejaculation of vomit. Once this subsided, he stood up again and gave his
credentials. “I’m an officer in the Royal Air Force, this is how we normally
wake up in the morning. Where am I?”
“Baghdad Zoo,”
the gardener returned to sweeping bomb fragments. “You are in the tiger
enclosure.”
Biggles found
three Bengali tigers staring intently at him from shadows, he also found he was
locked in the cage with them.
“I don’t
suppose you could let me out?” Biggles rattled the cage like a disgruntled
baboon.
“That is up to
the judge who put you there,” the sweeping continued.
“Why would he
put me in the tiger enclosure?” Biggles rolled his eyes in amazement, “I mean,
I am Biggles after all.”
“We can no
longer afford prisons, every time we build one, either the Americans blow it up
trying to blow up Al-Qaeda, or Al-Qaeda blows it up trying to blow up the
Americans. You may have noticed there has recently been a great deal of blowing
up in Iraq.”
“What about the
tigers?”
“They are all
suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from all the explosions and are
too afraid to do anything,” then the gardener grinned, “Also they save on
prison guards.”
“And why am I
in here?” Biggles scratched his head and looked for fleas.
“English, I was
told you were caught pissing in the Tigris. Ironic is it not, from Tigris to
Tigers.”
“Have you seen
how polluted the Tigris is?”
“That is why we
have so many laws against pissing in it.”
Biggles spent
the morning grooming a five hundred pound Bengal tiger until the provost
marshal arrived to investigate the charges.
“It says here,”
the provost marshal flipped through a clipboard, “you not only tried to steal a
milk float, but you also drove it at high speed through the streets of Baghdad
screaming Marco Polo, Marco Polo, defying anyone to cross the street and
pelting the residents with ice slurpies and frozen yoghurt.”
“Must have been
a good night, jolly what?”
“Yes, indeed,”
the provost marshal wrote this down, “have you any defence?”
“I have no
memory of any of this.”
“No memory,”
the provost marshal sighed, “care to make a statement?”
“I’m British.”
“That’s your
statement?”
“It says it
all.”
“Wouldn’t care
to elaborate?”
“Where would
the world be without cricket?”
The provost
marshal took a deep breath. “Alright, since no witnesses are willing to
testify, as witnesses have a tendency to disappear if they do, and since you
have no memory of anything, I’m forced to let you go.”
“Can I take
Riley with me?” Biggles pointed at the giant tiger purring next to him.
“Don’t see why
not, not on the clipboard.”
“Jolly!”
Biggles was ecstatic, “if this doesn’t put me in the good books with the WAAF’s
then nothing will.”
The look on the tiger could only be described as startled.
The look on the tiger could only be described as startled.
Copyright reserved by Jim O’Brien ©
