He had a cadaverous, blue veined face with a long pointed, sniffy nose and rheumy eyes, he was not a man you could warm to, but he was extremely polite, and always neatly dressed, collar and tie summer or winter. The nails on his long bony fingers were scrupulously clean, meticulously manicured; he played the organ in the local church. He had been widowed for twenty three years lived alone and seemed to have no family or friends and seldom had much to say.

Most weekday lunchtimes he came to the pub, more often in the winter when we always had a big fire. On a good weekday lunch time there would be three or four domino schools with a constant drone of banter and gossip, punctuated with triumphant exclamation as someone knocked or went out. Man and boy they were all locals all of a similar age to him, but somehow they all looked younger more hearty, robust and lively. To me it seemed that they just tolerated him to make up the numbers. Two or three of them were also active members of the church and from time to time the vicar would drop in and join them for a drink. It was he that told me that he and the organist had come to the village at the same year 1953.

When I took over this village pub I inherited the domino players, three dart teams, the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffalos and the 1914 -18 hot pot dinner. This dinner for veterans of the Great War was held every year on or near the eleventh and paid for by the brewery. In 1970 we served twenty seven, some of them domino players four years on we were down to fifteen. The organist never attended.

In those four years I had hardly exchanged more than a few words with him, other than polite platitudes. Then one day, at the end of October when it was lashing down outside and there was a customary lull at the tables for a pee break, he came to the bar as he always on his own. The others bought their drinks in rounds but he always bought his own and would painstakingly count out his change from a small purse. That lunchtime there were two young guys at the bar talking about a documentary they had watched on 20^th century warfare the previous night. Aware that he must have heard some of the conversation, I looked up as I pulled his pint of mild.

‘What do you make of all this talk of war?’ I said. It was banal remark; I was just passing the time of day and not really expecting much of a response.

‘Oh,’ he said slowly, ‘I don’t much like to think about that sort of thing,’ and then paused, ‘I‘ve been living on borrowed time this last fifty years.’

He paid and went back to his dominos. I was busy with other customers but something about the pause, fifty years, it intrigued me.  He didn’t sup fast so it was probably the best part of forty minutes before he came back for another pint.

‘Fifty odd years is a long time,’ I said as he counted out his change, ‘you’d be a lot younger then.’

As he handed me his money he paused as if deciding whether this required an answer and then he said, ‘ I were, nineteen when I were at the Marne,’ another pause, ‘with Kings Liverpool, it were the first time I saw men killed, it weren’t good.’   He returned to his game

This conversation such as it was took place on a Friday and I was busy but the words stayed with me all weekend. I thought I knew quiet a lot about WW1 but I was surprised when I looked it up, to see the Marne was September 1914.

Monday lunch time he was back in and when he came to the bar I had to ask, ‘How come you were there at the beginning?’

‘Oh’, he spoke slowly, ‘I were with territorials so we were first to go, we went over with General Haig’.

That Monday I learned more, as part of BEF he did not get his first UK leave until the end of 1915 by when he had been involved some serious action, and then he told me…..

‘When I came home, first thing was to go pub to see my mates. I felt a bit daft going down in uniform so I got changed and I were in civvies when two young lasses stopped me’, he paused, and said simply, ‘they both gave me a white feather.’

‘What did you say to them?’ I said outraged and also beginning to feel a little ashamed, books and covers came to mind.

‘Oh’, he sighed, ‘I weren’t going to bandy words with them’, he said, ‘I’ve still got ‘em, silly business.’

Over the next few months I learned that he served four years in the trenches, the Somme the lot, right through to the 11th hour of the 11^th day and that his best mate was killed on the 10th. That’s why never came to the memorial supper, he said he just did not want to remember.

One Sunday on his way home from church he came in with his bible, there, between the pages were two white feathers. It was as much as I could do to choke back the tears. I made an excuse went down the cellar and cried.

He died a year later, there were five people at his funeral and no mention of WW1 in the short obituary in the local paper.