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© 2008 Tedwill
When I was 9 (1954) I was playing with my friends on the debris. The debris was where a bomb had dropped during the war and flattened all the houses. We were playing with water pistols and having a great time getting soaked. I squirted one boy called Geoffrey Webb and he got upset because I hit him in the face. So he chased me, and I ran as best as I could all the way home. My front door was shut, so I could not run inside and he started a fight. Yes I was really scared. It was the only fight I ever had in my life and i was forced to hit him back. Now I was upset and was crying my eyes out as i hit him back. He got me down on the floor and started to punch me in the face, now I got really mad and threw him off. I stood up and hit him so hard he was lifted off his feet and fell onto the front of my dads car. I know I hurt him because he stopped and ran off home. A few days later he came and apologized, he said he was apologising mainly because I had 7 stitches in a cut in my knee and it was bandaged and he felt bad about fighting with me when i was already injured. We became best of friends after that and he invited me to join the Wolf Cubs with him. The wolf cubs was the junior section of the boy scouts movement.
I joined and I went every week until I was 11, we mostly played games and learned a few things. When I was 11 I went up into the scouts. We had sea scouts and boy scouts in our group, I wanted to join the sea scouts. It was the best thing I ever did, it gave me a chance to do things outside of home and gave me lots of adventures.
In the sea scouts we did everything! We did the same things the boy scouts did plus we also did a lot of boating and seamanship training on the river Thames. One sunday a month we went to an island in the Thames near Kingston called Ravens Ait (ait is a saxon word meaning island in a riveror lake). I learned how to tie knots quickly, row, canoe and sail, all these activities did not require me to walk far.
In 1957 I had the first operation on my feet, in this one they cut all of the tendons to all of my toes to release them from being claw toes to straight toes. While I was in hospital, I think for 6 weeks, I met a scout leader who ran a scout group for all of the boys in the hospital. His name was Joe Benitez and was a very friendly man. He spoke 8 languages which amazed me as I could only speak sort of English and rubbish. He taught us a few things while we were in hospital like bird and tree recognition.
When I went home from hospital, he wrote to me, inviting me to go to a special scout camp called an Agoonoree. I of course had never heard of it, but apparently it was for handicapped scouts. I had never considered myself handicapped, except until then it was mostly the kids at school that called me cripple and many other names that made me feel different. Of course it was painful to walk and do stuff and I did not realize I had a handicap, I thought I was normal. Anyway, I went to the camp for two weeks at a place called Dunstable. We camped in a field with big bell tents and because most of the kids there were handicapped, we had proper full sized metal beds. When I say the other boys were handicapped, I really mean it, in comparison I WAS normal except both of my legs were in plaster of paris from the knees down. These other boys had cerebral palsy, brittle bone disease, blind, deaf, physically deformed and many other ailments. In comparison I really was normal and I had not realized what a cripple was until I saw them. Compared to all the other boys at school, I was the cripple. Not now though. I knew better.
We camped in a field and we had a program of things to do with a camp fire every night. I really had the best time of my life at this camp mainly because it was the first holiday I had ever had away from my parents. One day we all loaded onto coaches, wheelchairs as well, and went to the Jubilee Jamboree at Sutton Coldfield. This jamboree was to celebrate 50 years of scouting and had scouts from every country in the world there. That was a great but tiring day, remember I had plaster on both of my legs and still had to walk everywhere. Imagine your legs weighing twice as much as normal and then walking all day across rough ground. Boy it was hard, but fun. I had it easier than a lot because they had crutches. Just remember, when you are down, the only way is up and there is always someone worse off than you. I also found that all of the boys worse off than me were HAPPY, yes they had day to day mishaps, but they were happy and that was a big boost for me. That was a major lesson I learned on that camp.
When I got home afterwards I was walking faster than my mum and I still had the plaster on my legs. A week or two later the plaster came off. I had to learn to walk again because my balance had changed. I used crutches for a few weeks until I could manage. When I looked at my feet, the toes were flat at last. They were straight!!!! Stage one completed.
After 1957, with my confidence boosted I did many things including camping, hiking, rowing and learning to sail. Rowing was in 2.5 tonne wooden boats called whalers. They are the boats pointed at each end used when whale hunting. Remember Moby Dick?/ These were heavy boats and a crew of 5 boys used 18ft oars to propel it. That put the muscle on. At 15 I started to go to scout association campsite to maintain the site. We were formed into a service crew and carried out all manner of tasks from mowing fields, painting boats, running reggatas and the campsite. I joined crews at various campsites because i now developed a liking for travelling and meeting people. I became a Sea Scout leader of a scout troop with up to 40 boys at various times. I loved the interaction with the boys and training them in all the things I had learned.
I had to give up scouting in 1973 when i joined the fire service full time. For me the shiftwork interfered with running the scouts and no other person wanted to be the leader. So sadly it had to finish.