Escape from Hell

The next day as he awoke in his accommodation - a metal bed with a tin locker alongside, he was summoned to the first of many sessions of rehabilitation. He was to be fitted with false legs and taught a trade to sustain him after he was discharged from the army.

So he settled down to a routine of plaster casts of his stumps, leather sheaths being fitted and refitted, interviews for career options and then practising walking with crutches on uncomfortable wooden legs. He was determined to succeed and gradually developed the ability to balance and waddle across the room before collapsing with exhaustion.

He wrote letters, but now they were addressed to Gwen instead of Agnes. As was their wont they never discussed his progress; they wrote of other things -- anything but of injuries and job prospects.

After some months Gwen took a week's leave from her hospital. She caught a train north and he was waiting on the station platform for her, proudly standing on his new legs. They hugged and kissed but there was a difference. He was no longer dependant on her.

The conversation was distinctly small talk instead of their previously involved discussions. Gwen cut the visit short and returned to her hospital in the Welsh Borders where she was needed.

-* * *

The convalescent hospital catered for a range of patients, including civilians that had suffered horrendous injuries at a nearby ammunition factory. The 'Filling Factory' as it was called was where explosives, casings and detonators were assembled. Massive expansion in the requirements for shells had led to the establishment of a variety of such factories around the country, providing employment to mainly women. Constant exposure to the explosive chemicals tended to impart a yellow hue to the women's skin and they referred to themselves as Canaries.

One such worker was a regular day visitor to the hospital. Peggy was twenty one years old, slim and quite tall. She would have been a regular beauty if she had not been employed in the munitions factory, not been carrying a tray of detonators one day - and not tripped over and dropped them.

The resulting explosion had blown away not only both of her hands but also both of her breasts.

Walter came to know Peggy well. She attended regularly to be fitted for her prosthetic hands and they whiled away many an hour in the canteen waiting for various technicians and doctors to do whatever technicians and doctors did.

By a fluke the way that she had fallen over a chair meant that her face had largely escaped without injury, so she did not have some of the disfigurements of many other victims of such accidents. Some were blinded and deafened -- some were killed of course.

* * *

Peggy had grown up in a seaside holiday town near to the factory that had destroyed her life. Long summers as a child in a popular resort had given her an education that would be the envy of many; she had known nearly every music hall star of the time. Her parents were the proprietors of a boarding house where the performers had been regular guests, usually staying for months at a time.

Comedians, jugglers, magicians, singers; they had all graced the local stages during the summer seasons. Walter was fascinated. He had read about such people but had never attended a performance, now he heard stories about them all.

There had been a downturn in the tourist industry with the coming of war and the staff who would have been in demand in hotels, restaurants, bars and theatres were no longer required. However there were plenty of vacancies in the munitions works and Peggy was one of thousands producing the shells for the army and navy. Shells that were consumed by the million, mostly hurled at men sheltering in muddy trenches.

By now Walter was well on the way to recovery. He could propel himself around in his wheelchair and stagger short distances on his legs, and could assist her with fiddly tasks that she could not manage with her primitive replacements for her hands. He helped her to eat and write; in return she could shove his wheel chair over a kerb or obstruction, and assist with going up hills.

They caught a bus together and went the short distance to the coast. Here there was not the dirty industrialisation of Walter's home town but vast flat lands of sand and mud. The tide flowed fast across the level ground and they had to stay close to the shore to avoid being cut off. They paddled on the damp sand, patting the surface to entice cockles to the surface and sitting on grassy clumps to enjoy the view. The war seemed a long distance away...

* * *

They started to see each other during the evenings. They had separate accommodation blocks and neither was allowed inside the other's, but they went to local pubs and to the cinema together.

It wasn't long before they started kissing. They had gone to see a film; they were always called films -- never 'movies'. Walter had worn his legs for the evening and Peggy wore her fake hands; carved wooden objects painted flesh-coloured. At the end of the film she came into his arms, turning her face up to his, inviting contact and he gently obliged. It felt good to be in the arms of a woman once more, she was unable to hold him except to grip between her arms but it did not matter. He hugged her close and nestled into her hair, breathing in her scent.

Her useless arms didn't try to dissuade him from stroking her bottom; she moved her legs apart to allow access and one of her knees moved into his groin to press against him.

All too soon it was time to leave the building and they made their way to the bus stop. They sat together on the bus in the back row of seats, the traditional place for courting couples. When they arrived at their destination they started to walk the short distance to the accommodation, but there was a barn alongside the road and she led him to a doorway. The door was unlocked and they entered, where they found bales of straw stacked up for winter animal bedding.

She lay down in a cosy hollow amongst the bales and Walter joined her. They embraced and she lifted her thigh to allow his hand to wander around to the front of her button-front dress. The dress was borrowed from a friend and it had been made for someone slightly heavier. She had secured it by tying a belt around her waist, and as soon as he loosened it she kicked off her shoes and raised her knees to allow the dress to fall back.

Her basic long white knickers were exposed and he rested his hand on her thigh as they kissed. Peggy moved her thighs even further apart and his hand fell into the cleft against her most intimate of places.

* * *

His head was spinning. He didn't remember any of his encounters with Agnes being as exciting, or as daring as this. He cupped her mound and pressed his fingers gently against the soft flesh below. He heard murmurs of enjoyment and tucked his hand down behind the waistband of the undergarment. Again there was no protest, just more enthusiastic kissing.

He felt her arm press against his crotch and caress his growing erection. This was definitely how an encounter with a female should feel, he thought.

His hand moved lower inside her knickers and found her thick matte of soft hair. Even further down he found her slit; warm, moist and welcoming. He separated her labia and pressed against her nub of firm flesh, at which she wriggled her hips and pressed her tongue into his mouth - inviting his penetration of her body.

She raised her hips and whispered for him to remove the undergarment. Walter eased down the voluminous knickers down; they were baggy enough to be eased over her shoes. He gazed upon her milky white belly and thighs with the dark triangle at the join.

She told him to remove his trousers and legs, and a minute and two buckles later they were removed. She pulled him across and on top of her, so that his hardness pressed directly against her sensitive parts.

With more prompting he removed his under-shorts and lay back down on top of her, his penis now firmly at attention. She raised her knees high and shuffled him into position, then slowly he slid inside.

Peggy expelled her breath, which she realised she had been holding. She rocked him slowly and he took up the rhythm, his stumps comfortably supported by the straw bales.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and controlled his pace to her satisfaction, slowing him when he seemed to be going too fast and likely to finish too early. She made sure that the angle and depth of his penetration stimulated her and when everything was perfect she urged him to climax.

When he came, she pulled his body in even closer; feeling his final thrusts grinding against her -- enough to push her over the edge.

They lay still, trying to catch their breath. Eventually he withdrew and gathered his clothes. Peggy was unable to dress without assistance and lay uncovered in the gloom whilst he re-attached his legs and dressed himself. Then he held her knickers for her feet to go through the holes and pulled them over her bottom neatly.

* * *

All too soon the treatment was ended. Walter returned to his old home to live with his parents again. Agnes still would have nothing to do with him and from his friends he heard that she had taken up with a Canadian soldier. Not another infantryman likely to be wounded or killed but a corporal working in the Quartermaster's Stores.

His parents had visited him regularly in hospital; his mother sitting with tearful eyes, his father gruffly shaking his hand and saying "Chin up" repeatedly. Now it was a return to his childhood, being looked after like a toddler. Even in the army he had had a more adult life.

So he stayed in contact with Peggy, writing and reading letters daily. After a fortnight with his parents he needed to escape so he visited her.

They lived a couple of hours apart by the slow train, which stopped at every available station -- and waited interminably in sidings for the express to whistle past and for various trains on military duty to trundle on by. A certain boarding house seemed the obvious choice to stay at and Peggy was waiting for him.

It was a rambling old house, much extended and a relic of grander times. Peggy made sure that Walter was allocated a room well away from the part where her parents lived; she had no intention of creaking floorboards and bedsprings causing her embarrassment.

After the ice had been broken and evening dinner served, Walter retired to his room. He didn't have long to wait; his door quietly opened and she came to him.

He was sitting in an armchair looking through the window at the wide sands and the flat grey sea beyond. She joined him briefly to inspect the view and then moved away from the window. Silently and with closed eyes she unfastened and removed her blouse which was hooked together for simplicity and showed him her scarred chest. Then she shrugged away her wooden hands.

He had never seen her before unclothed. Where breasts should have been awaiting his attention, flat skin still looked red and raw across her ribs. A tear trickled from her clenched eyes but otherwise she was motionless.

Walter reached out and touched the point of her chin and she looked at him. "Do you see? I am not a whole woman any more. Will you want me?"

He had not imagined what the sight would be, now he was shocked. "That's a terrible thing to happen, but you're the same person inside."

She laughed bitterly. "That's such a rubbish thing to say. That's what the nurses say, it's rubbish, rubbish."

Slowly, he lowered his hand, following the line of her throat and across her collar bone. Over her shoulder and under her arm, brushing her ribs down her side with barely a touch. He reached her waist and hesitated. "You are all woman for me. Do you want me to touch you?"

She nodded, so he reversed the action, up the centre of her stomach and up the centre of where her cleavage should have been.

"Do you think that you have the monopoly on injury? I'm not a whole man any more. That makes us a fair match I would say." It then occurred to him that she may not know about the injury to his manhood. "You know of the extent of my injuries I suppose?"

She looked at him blankly, "You lost your legs, but there's nothing wrong with you as a man."

"You're mistaken. I left a bollock in France, may it bring good luck to the Kaiser."

"That's not right, we did it in the barn remember?"

He unfastened his trousers and raised the legs of his shorts to unbuckle the leather sheaths of his legs. He heaved himself from he devices and sat back, removing his shirt, vest and pulling down his shorts. At last he sat before her, naked. His stumps flared out before him, his cock semi-erect.

"You see? Half a man."

Underneath his penis she saw that his scrotum was lop-sided and misshapen. She stared at him and it took a moment before she recognised the extent of the deficiency. "It did not affect you when we made love."

"And having your injury did not affect you either." He replied. Walter touched her again, caressing her belly and continuing down over the remainder of her clothes.

Walter unfastened the rest of her clothing so that they both sat on the bed naked facing each other. He stroked her pubic region, reaching underneath for her labia. "You have hair where a woman has hair, you have lips where a woman has lips. You look like a woman to me."

Peggy separated her thighs so that he could touch her further. "Mine is worse than you would imagine. You can touch me. I can never again touch a man." Her bare arms hung uselessly.

He ceased and looked into her eyes. "You say you cannot touch me, but there is a way if there is a will." He moved her feet so that her toes were against his penis.

She took his hint, leaned back on her elbows and slowly rubbed the soles of her feet against him. Gently at first, then more firmly and more quickly she moved, feeling his erection against the arches of her feet. She squeezed her feet together, gripping him tightly. I doing so she opened her knees further allowing him a clear view of her private area but she was careless with her modesty and enjoying the sensation.

Peggy paused and moved her toes to explore his scrotum with its single testicle. After a while he shifted and embraced her, nestling between her soft thighs which clamped around him...

* * *

Chapter 7

They lay together as the moonlight illuminated them through the window. Walter stroked the roundness of her belly, down to the soft hair below. In the distance there was a series of booms.

He turned to look at her, quizzically. A second later there was a blast which shook the whole house and caused dust to fall from the ceiling. Peggy jumped up and looked out of the window but there was nothing to see except for the distant placid sea. The moon reflected from her naked body as she turned.

"I don't know what that was, it could have been anything." But the casual remark was belied by the concern in her face.

In the distance they could hear a siren wailing. "God. It's the ammo factory. It's gone up."

She reached for her clothes as they could hear movement around the house. Swiftly they dressed and went to the front door where they joined her parents. Every house in the street had it's front door open with the occupants gazing at the sight. Now they were on the inland side of the house there was a red glow in the sky.

Another series of booms followed. Soon people appeared, walking along the street. Some were limping, others covered with mud.

Most of the people were women, One was wearing just her nightclothes and was covered in blood so they helped her inside to clean her up. There were no serious injuries, just a gash on her forehead so a simple bandage was fixed and she sat on the sofa to drink a cup of tea.

Several others ended coming into the house, trembling with shock. No-one knew what had happened to cause the explosion, just that the entire factory seemed to be on fire.

Later on in the night there was one almighty explosion and it appeared as if the very house was collapsing. They found themselves covered in broken glass; every window in the house was smashed by the force of the blast. They ran outside and found that a huge fire was lighting up the sky; more women were streaming past - thousands of them. The kettle went back on to boil to make more tea.

* * *

The next day Walter and Peggy walked through crowded streets to the factory site. It was a massive place with hundreds of buildings; the entire place seemed to be flattened, the devastation was complete. Not only that but many houses and other buildings nearby had also been extensively damaged. There was a large gathering there, it seemed that most of the entire population of the town had come out to survey the scene.

The quiet break that they had planned was over. The hotels, including the boarding house, were all full of people whose homes were no longer inhabitable and needed somewhere to stay. Summer was over and in this northern area the nights were getting longer and colder.

Walter packed his things and said goodbye to Peggy. He walked to the railway station but when he reached it, the place was packed. The factory had been shut down -- heck it didn't exist any more, and all the workers had been laid off. There were hundreds of people waiting for trains and when he went to the ticket office he found that there were no more trains available for that day.

He bought a ticket for the following day and returned to the hotel. When he reached it he found that his room was now occupied by a displaced family. However Peggy greeted him warmly; she was getting in the way of the sudden rush and could not help.

She invited him straight up to her room without telling her parents. They shared her supper when the maid delivered it and that night he stayed in her room. They snuggled together and disregarded her parents who would not have heard anything, being rushed off their feet as they were dealing with the influx of desperate visitors.

In the morning Peggy made a decision. She packed a small case and walked with him to the station where she managed to buy a ticket; the crowds of passengers were starting to diminish. She joined Walter on the busy train and they found seats, their obvious disabilities gaining the sympathies of the laid-off workers returning to their homes.

Together they travelled south but alighted many miles short of Walter's home town. After making enquiries at the station, they found cheap lodgings in the town. The elderly landlady made no comment when they signed the registration as 'Mr and Mrs Smith' -- the classic name used by unmarried couples.

They went to their room, Walter closed the bedroom door and undressed her. Then he sat down next to her on the bed and let her practice undressing him, using only her feet...

*

The explosion at the National Filling Factory (where explosives were packed into artillery shells) at White Lund, Morecambe in England on 1st October 1917 was heard over 20 miles away. Some filled shells were thrown clear over the town and landed in the sea beyond. A trainload of completed shells was saved from the fire by the extraordinary bravery of a train driver; the cause of the explosion was never established, the factory never re-opened.

In the trenches of WWI, the water used to make the tea was treated with chloride of lime as a purifier. This imparted a foul taste.