Brass Monkey Weather is on the horizon

Mr Ferman earned a reputation for predicting the onset of a cold spell. He would foretell the arrival of the first winter freeze with uncanny accuracy. An old fellow in his late seventies, he had rugged features that told a story about a hard life lived to the full. It gave him much joy to share his stories with all who cared to listen at his local watering hole a few hundred yards from his home. Every Friday he would venture there on foot,  then entertain the regulars with his fanciful stories about a wild and daring past. Well lubricated, he would stagger home. The most enduring memory of him was his ability to pinpoint the moment inclement and bitterly cold winter weather would strike with a vengeance. 

Most of his far fetched yarns defied belief. They usually involved his dubious heroic exploits during his years as a daring young chap. The listeners would exchange knowing winks and nudges as his tales approached the realm of the absurd. There would be bar fights from which he inevitably emerged as the victor, having inflicted the most egregious injuries on those who had been foolhardy enough to challenge him. Ne’er a bruise on Ferman, mind you.

His stories were clearly a figment of his imagination and convinced one and all that he could lie with incredible fluency. He lied as only one could who believed his own fantasies implicitly. So out of touch was he with reality that, with every word that tested the bounds of plausibility, he would become more animated and his stories more riveting for his enthralled audience. The knowledge that Ferman lived on the wrong side of the truth regarding his imagined past, in no way detracted from the entertainment value of each and every nuance of the balderdash emanating from his mouth and the deep recesses of his mind.

Curiously, Mr Ferman never uttered a word about having served in the First World War. Having served in the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), he had indeed experienced what no human should. The real life experience he had, which was not a figment of an overactive imagination, was infinitely more spectacular than the experiences he conjured up for his many stories. Yet, of this experience and the suffering inflicted upon him and his buddies in arms, he never spoke. Unknown to his audience at the “local”, these were well hidden in his traumatised psyche and kept out of earshot of those he regularly entertained with such alacrity.

From July to November 1917 one of the fiercest and most devastating battles took place on the Western Front, in the fields of Flanders – a battle for control of the ridges that flanked the Belgian City of Ypres. Passchendaele would be indelibly imprinted on the memories of the survivors and earn a well deserved listing on a record of the most brutal moments in the long history of the butchery of war.  Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), launched a foolhardy offensive against the German lines, oblivious to the onset of the Autumn rains in the area, which occurred with the monotonous regularity of the infamous Monsoons and were entirely predictable. Commanders during the First World War had scant regard for the suffering endured by the troops, treating them as cannon fodder as they went “over the top” of the trenches.

The trenches themselves were the most dreadful experience for the ordinary young conscript. Mud and slush were modest problems compared to the constant threat of chemical attack, Mustard Gas having the capacity to make a bad situation worse. When there was a lull in fighting, the battle against the elements continued relentlessly. An incessant irritation was the rodent infestation and the struggle to find adequate rest. The weariness of intermittent sleep, the awkwardness of having to take naps propped up in spaces not fit for human habitation… The cold penetrated the constantly soaked uniforms. Even the trench coats offered little insulation to the worn out bodies, bruised and  battered without respite. Seldom were boots removed and trench foot was rife, resulting in rotting toes and often amputation of a foot – leaving veterans with a life long disability.  

Ferman survived the war, albeit with wounds that became a constant reminder of the deprivation and his wartime dice with death. He had on more occasions than he cared to remember, been ordered “over the top”, and cheated death in the face of machine gun fire. Like most veterans, he had been shot – on multiple occasions. One of the few who managed to live another day after the German cannons and machine guns had strafed the advancing Allied lines, he had been sent to the military infirmary, a welcome temporary relief from the trenches - more than once. Upon discharge, he had been sent straight back to the front and more encounters with the Grim Reaper that he would have preferred to avoid. He saw out the rest of the war – battle scarred and shell shocked (PTSD), but ALIVE!

A raconteur par excellence, Mr Ferman was adept at the fine art of story telling. One area alone was off limits, though. As is the case with many a military veteran, he avoided the topic of the War and his role in it. Unlike those who never heard a shot fired in anger, he did not brag about his exploits on the field of battle. Nor did he tell of the times he cheated death by the slimmest of margins. No-one was ever shown the bullet and shrapnel wounds he carried on his torso. He kept these well hidden, lest he be persuaded to dwell on the bitter experiences in a battle and a war not of his making – and the purpose of which was ultimately futility. The death and destruction served only as a face saving exercise for men who wielded great power, but were not themselves invested in the maintenance thereof by themselves having to fight and risk life and limb. 

The only sure indication that he was concealing a bitter and painful experience, was his eccentricity coupled with an uncanny ability to predict a cold spell on the horizon. Shortly before wind, rain and snow would descend on his village, Ferman would boldly and confidently predict this Brass Monkey weather. His hidden scars began to play up and cause the most dreadful discomfort, a sure sign that a cold snap was on its way, dredging up experiences best left untold. 

The most harrowing of his experiences on the fields of Flanders remained hidden in the deep recesses of his mind. Being gassed, shot at, on the wrong side of a strafing machine gun and, the ultimate pain, witnessing a trench buddy being blown to bits and not making it out alive – these would never surface in his gripping stories. Those memories remained hidden in the mists of time and deep within his psyche, making him somewhat of an enigmatic figure in the community.

Ironically, this silence on the topic of wars and battles fought was, to him, a tribute to all veterans of conflict who had been sent to die or carry life long scars and mental anguish. By not glorifying armed conflicts past and present, Mr Ferman was tipping his hat to all those who had borne the brunt of man’s inhumanity to man.

©Paul M Haupt