MONO ISSUE 2 - Flipbook - Page 81
HOW WE WON THE WAR
by Maud Woolf
“HAVE YOU EVER HEARD of a little invention known as the Panzerkampfwagen?” my
boss asks us. “One of the most powerful weapons ever created. The Germans built over
eight thousand of them.”
“Of course,” my co-worker says quickly. “You mean the Panzer three? Nasty piece of
work.”
“Oh, yes horrible. Killed thousands,” my boss says. “But a work of genius.”
“Well that’s the thing about war,” my co-worker says, not to be outdone. “It’s
productive. Some of the best inventions ever made were thought up in wartime.”
I nod and try to look sombre. I realise suddenly that I’m putting more effort into
looking interested than in following the thread of the conversation. Already I’ve
forgotten what a Panzer is. A gun or a tank or a plane perhaps. I wonder if it was ever
mentioned. I wonder if I was supposed to ask.
I find myself incapable of caring too much. My eyes drift over to the clock. Ten
minutes till we close. Ten minutes left of an eight-hour shift.
“Of course, we had our Sten guns,” my boss muses, sitting on the counter and kicking
his legs like a little boy.
“Those were pretty rough to fire though,” my co-worker says, crossing his arms.
“Cheap.”
He is thirty-three years old. Exactly a decade older than me. Has he ever fired a gun? I
think he told me about playing paintball once. At a stag party.
“Oh yes and they kicked like a mule,” my boss agrees heartily. “But the trick there was
that they were mass-produced. We had factories all over England pumping them out.
And in the end that made all the difference.”
I nod again and hum in agreement. I’m thinking about the pasta I will make for dinner.
I’m thinking about taking my shoes off. This is not the first time I’ve had an impromptu
history lesson at the end of a shift, when the customers have mostly left, and we’ve run
out of boxes to unpack. I’m the youngest here, the new hire and one of two women on
the staff; I am explained to often and at great length.
I don’t really mind most of the time. I like to get on with people. I like my boat unrocked. For a moment however I think about saying, I’m actually quite familiar with
World War Two. I studied history at university. But this moment of self-righteousness
wouldn’t be worth the awkward fumbling silence that would follow. And besides,
although I studied the war, the technology never really interested me. I liked treaties. I
liked the cultural shift. I liked knowing what they wore, what they ate for dinner. I
transferred after a year of study to the History of Art instead. I looked at pictures on a
wall.
“Talk about German efficiency all you like,” my co-worker says. “But we held up our
end of it pretty well too.”
“Well…for the most part,” my boss says.
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