{"id":4357,"date":"2020-09-14T11:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T10:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuartpoetry.art\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2020-09-14T11:00:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T10:00:47","slug":"my-father-was-a-paratrooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/14\/my-father-was-a-paratrooper\/","title":{"rendered":"My Father was a Paratrooper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My father was once a paratrooper and as the eldest I was expected to follow him<\/div>\n
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But I was scared of heights and the thought of jumping out of a plane filled me with dread<\/div>\n
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So when the war came along I stayed at home making needles and hatpins and the coloured paperclips that we all like to steal<\/div>\n
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Some called me a coward but as I only spoke Danish I did not understand them<\/div>\n
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I received white feathers by the lorryload which I found useful when stuffing the red ornate cushions<\/div>\n
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Which my family factory produced with the aid of my needles and embroidery silks<\/div>\n
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During the conflict we were allocated a number of rather handsome prisoners of war<\/div>\n
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At first I did not know what to do with them until my cousin suggested that we train them as paratroopers<\/div>\n
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I encouraged them to jump from tall factory chimney’s to improve and sharpen their undoubted skills<\/div>\n
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The authorities frowned upon these activities and I was accused of being a collaborator<\/div>\n
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My head was shaved which was of little concern to me as I was already quite bald<\/div>\n
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They threatened to hang me but as our factory supplied their rope this presented something of a logistical problem<\/div>\n
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In the end they released me from the high security prison on the moors and ordered me to be very good boy<\/div>\n
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When I returned to our Hull factory I found that one of the prisoners of war had married my cousin Nice twice<\/div>\n
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He had taken charge of the business expanding into decorated quilts and soft bedroom furnishings<\/div>\n
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This upset me greatly and although I was terrified of heights I trained to become a paratrooper just like my father<\/div>\n
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All went well until my first jump when I was stopped at airport customs because my passport was out of date<\/div>\n
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Again I was incarcerated this time as a spy but as luck would have the war ended and I was presented with a small postcard shop In Southend on Sea<\/div>\n
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Along with a Swiss chalet which made rainbow parachutes for all the repressive regimes in the developing world<\/div>\n
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For the first time in my life I experienced great happiness and when I reached my twenty-eighth year I returned to my orphanage home<\/div>\n
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Where as a mature student I wrote books about rodent control in the eighteenth century<\/div>\n
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FIN<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reply<\/span>Reply all<\/span>Forward<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father was once a paratrooper and as the eldest I was expected to follow him But I was scared of heights and the thought of jumping out of a plane filled me with dread So when the war came along I stayed at home making needles and hatpins and the coloured paperclips that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}