To Josh, Louis and Thomas
Charlie in the Blitz
I was sitting on the comfy black sofa, watching “The Dam Busters” with my master. I was amazed by the men who dropped the bouncing bomb to destroy the German dam. My master turned off the TV and looked at me. I started to get nervous, because of last time. Each time my master stares at me something goes dangerously wrong!
I decided to make a leap for it! As I was in midair, making for the door, everything turned black. This time I landed in a dark room. It was cold and empty, and felt damp, like it was underground. A siren was sounding in the distance. I could hear people running towards me saying “Quickly, everyone, get into the shelter.”
Behind me a door banged open and people swarmed in. I ran out between their legs into the dark city. I ran past big explosions, torn down houses, crumpled bricks and humungous towers that had fallen down. I saw bombs, and zeplins. Bombs exploded all around me. It smelt horrible, just like fire, houses burned next to me. Things fell really close to my tail. As I passed a crater I saw a child in a ruined building. There was fire really close to him. I saw a path towards the countryside, but I couldn’t leave him. I ran towards him with all my might, as the fire crept towards him. It was only five metres away. I dug through the bricks and meowed so loudly that a man in a tin helmet ran over. The fire was two meters away. The man pulled his arms. The fire was burning my tail. The man pulled the boy free just as the fire reached him.
A bomb fell so close to me. I ran and ran until I got to some country side. I could see all the chaos in the distance.
That was when I saw a base. It was a flying base. I ran towards it. Close up I read the words “British Fighter Command Base”. On the notice board, there was a poster saying “We will drop the famous bouncing bomb.”
I wandered in. It was huge. That was when I saw another cat just like me, even with the singed tail! Was there a mirror? We touched paws. I meowed at him. He ran off and jumped into a spitfire that was just taking off and flew away. I thought it was brilliant. That was when I saw the big dam busters plane. Now I knew what time I was in! I jumped into the cockpit.
“Hey” said the pilot, “there is a pusskin, we’ll have to delay it by getting him out”. I felt myself getting weaker and I fell asleep.
When I woke up I was not in the fighter, but instead of my master there were kids. I thought my master didn’t have kids, not even grandchildren. The kids were watching something different – German recipes. Then it said “Next Up, World War II, how the Germans defeated Britain”. Time had changed!
I noticed a green sparky thing, was I dreaming? I touched the sparky thing. I woke up in the Bomber Command again. I snuck out of the door, and saw another cat just like me! I touched paws and saw a spitfire. He meowed at me but I had no time to explain. I ran onto the runway and jumped onto the wing, just as it started moving. The pilot was about to close the roof when I leapt into the cockpit with him. He looked just like my master! The pilot winked at me. I tried to wink back, but everyone knows cats aren’t good at doing winks.
“Let’s go!” he said.
We took off and my ears popped. It seemed so fast. Below us I could see London lit up by burning buildings. “Right”, I thought, “payback time!”
Suddenly a German plane came up on us, firing its machine guns. My master shot it down and it tumbled, burning, to the ground. That was when I saw the river in the moon light, and I realised that we were over Putney. There were German bombers and fighters coming from all directions, trying to hit the ammunition factory on Putney High Street. We tried to stop them. My master shot at them. A plane started tumbling down towards the factory! “Oh no,” I thought “a plane is even worse than a bomb!”
A German fighter came up and shot our plane, we were going down. We were spiralling out of control! My master grabbed me tightly and ejected us backwards. I closed my eyes. There was a pull as the parachute opened. I nearly fell out of his arms.
Below us the ammunition factory exploded wildly. Metal pieces shot into the air. I caught two pieces. Hey, one sec, these weren’t pieces of metal. They looked like the badge I got in the trenches. That time the badge took me back home to my master, but this time it didn’t. Then I saw that we had drifted over my house! My master clicked two badges together; they spun round slowly at first and then got faster and faster. Suddenly around me a bubble came. We spun through a vortex. Quick as quick, the vortex started to close around us. I thought we were going to get trapped. But we were under our parachute drifting down slowly towards our back garden. We landed softly. It was quiet all around us. Where was the smell of smoke and burning? I looked and saw my trampoline, we were back in the present.
When we got inside, my master gathered my badges from the titanic, the trenches and the blitz, and clicked them together. In front of us a vortex appeared and a stone materialised. It was one metre high and half a metre across, and it was carved with faces like a totem pole. On it there were three blank spaces, the same shape as my badges.
My master looked at me and smiled. He carefully placed each badge into an empty space and with a rumble one of the heads turned round. Behind the head was a metal badge that said “Time Conqueror”. My master removed it and pinned it to my collar. Where the three badges had been, the stone shifted and a carving of me appeared! The stone evaporated and the time tunnel closed.
On Tuesday my master showed me a newspaper report of a weird statue that had been found in a cave in America. It had my face on it. My master and I smiled at each other.
The End
