Waste Not, Want Not

I was going to my main office in Wimpole Street on a particular lunchtime, and as I walked across a Henrietta Street, which leads into Wimpole Street, there were three policemen each holding three Irishmen by the scruff of their necks; who were wandering from one side of the road to the other. One of the Irish-men did in fact stop to have a wee in the middle of the road - which he couldn’t really prevent because that’s that way it was and they were all well and truly drunk. So they went on the way, and I had a chuckle to myself.

A few days later out of curiosity, I knew that they’d been taken down to the local police station; so I popped down to my local police station when I was at my head office and I saw the officers who were in charge. I said to him, “out of curiosity, what happened to the three Irishmen? He replied “Oh, we just had them in for 24 hours and let them cool off, and clear their heads, and we sent them back to work”. I said, “I’m still curious, what happened to them?” He said, “well, they were working on the bomb sites, and they came across an off-license which had been badly damaged by a bomb, but had retained some of its bottles of whisky, and they’d found them and made good use of them.”

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the BBC Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Bill Kendall and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Bill's stories:

• A White-Faced Inspector
• Chipolatas and Chips
• Doody
• Given a bit of cheek
• High-Tailed it home
• How it all began
• I was BKFJ434
• ’Let him go and let him tarry’
• In a split second timing
• Oranges and Lemons
• Rotten Bananas
• It was coming straight for me
• Tiny and Shiny
• Free post
• Time just came and went
• No. 1 London

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