490
ALAN
SILLITOE
power or alien system, and he'd not protect any government which
felt itself in danger or told him that he was in danger too. He owned
no property, and lived by his labor and skill, so saw very little con–
nection between government and people. When his eldest son Oliver
enlisted during the Great War he only forgave him because he was
killed, for even Burton was not so inhuman that he could hate the
dead.
Until quite late in life he never worked for a boss, having been
tI
ained as a blacksmith by his father so that he inherited the forge
at Lenton.
It
was situated on a lane running beside the railway
from Derby Road to Old Church Street. I remember passing it as a
child, by which time Burton had given it up for lack of customers,
and gone to work at Wollaton Pit. The motor car came in during
his lifetime, though I never heard him complain that it had ruined
his trade.
I walked by the old forge one day with my sister, on one of
our long treks to the shores of the Trent in summer.
It
was locked
up, and the building itself, which seemed no more than a shed,
looked as if it would soon fall down - though someone had put a
good strong lock on the rotten door to make sure no vandals went
in and helped it to collapse over them.
At the end of the lane, before winding back onto Gregory
Street, was a fieldgun from the horse artillery, set on a concrete
exhibition platform beyond some railings and surrounded by beds
of flowers. This satanic memo from the Great War that had finished
twenty years before stood in front of some almshouses erected for
the widows of heroes whom the world was fit for, but who perished
in the war to end wars. It was the badge of what had warped the
women's lives, and they cou ld dwell on that machine from their
bedroom or parlor windows, and maybe reflect that it was a similal
gun on the German side that had blown up their husbands.
Explosives were the most efficient killer of the Great War, ac–
cording to the mad and fascinating statistics of the official histories.
While forty percent of the casualties were caused by bullets, sixty
percent were killed or mangled by artillery. That gun I stared at
as a child made the air raw for me around those almshouses. I
couldn't resist pressing my face against the cold railings and staring
for several minutes at its grisly and intricate mechanisms, planted
there with such macabre sentiments. But I never saw a woman
