The Art of War

It was a fine sunny day...

When I look back at my childhood I remember that an occasional factor was that kids liked to be evil. I'm sure kids all over the world like to indulge in a bit of fighting or nastiness and where we grew up, here in Wareham, it was no different - apart from the fact I think we felt privileged somehow to have our own Anglo-Saxon battlements to act out our power struggles upon. There was no real harm intended at the heart of it I don't think - it was always a laugh, just like little foxes or badgers scrapping and learning with their kin. Although in retrospect you can probably pick out the moments where people took the piss too much or wounded people for life mentally or physically.

My friends and I grew up in the height of the first-wave of BMX fever. Choppers were becoming a little passé and even Raleigh Grifters with that Sturmey-Archer gear-shift were being laughed off in favour of cycles that were lighter (in some cases), smaller and generally meant you could be really stupid on. These crazy looking bikes meant that kids got together to prove themselves by being competitive doing jumps and wheelies - and on the whole it was often painful but fun. For our generation, getting a BMX was like a coming of age - it even meant we could legitimately go the the cinema and fawn over Nicole Kidman.

Apart from the bikes though we fought a lot. We made 'camps' in the woods and defended them with our lives. In fact, the Saxon walls of Wareham naturally led to groups of us - all mates normally - splitting up into teams to stand at the top or the bottom and have the traditional ritual of the 'stone fight'.

This involved an initial stone-gathering session and once battle had commenced, further more or less successful ammo-collection 'ceasefires' could be negotiated by shouting a lot or just running further away.

These fights often became insanely dangerous. Especially once some had become old enough or crafty enough to obtain catapults. Sure, there was the occasional injury, but how nobody was maimed for life I don't know. Normally things just degenerated into hysteria after a multitude of close calls or some especially amusing ricochet, occasionally off somebody's head.

Guns weren't far behind of course. I remember there was a tree at the end of the road and one day whilst someone was climbing it somebody else shot them with an air rifle. They fell out. That's just humiliating isn't it? I mean, one minute you are up a tree, probably minding your own business with not a care in the world, the next you're thinking, "Oh look, I've been shot," quickly followed by, "Oh look, I've been shot and I'm falling out of a tree... Ouch." Fortunatley they recovered well.

It's amazing what acts of madness people used to get up to - and on the whole it's pretty quiet round here, really... I have occasionally mentioned this 'stone fight' activity to people and they think it seems utterly bonkers - which of course it was - and apparently did nothing similar in their youth.

How about you, any interesting stories of youthful battles?