Last of the Trinity Tiddlers!

Captain Edmund Blackadder and Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St. Barleigh

George: Well, but this time I’m absolutely pos we’ll break through! It’s

ice cream in Berlin in 15 days.

Edmund: Or ice cold in No Man’s Land in 15 seconds. No, the time has come

to get out of this madness once and for all.

George: What madness is that?

Edmund: For God’s sake, George, how long have you been in the army?

George: Oh me? I joined up straight away, sir. August the 4th, 1914. Gah, what

a day that was: myself and the rest of the fellows leapfrogging down

to the Cambridge recruiting office and then playing tiddlywinks in the

queue. We had hammered Oxford’s tiddlywinkers only the week before,

and there we were, off to hammer the Boche! Crashingly superb bunch of

blokes. Fine, clean-limbed — even their acne had a strange nobility

about it.

Edmund: Yes, and how are all the boys now?

George: Well, er, Jacko and the Badger bought it at the first Ypres front,

unfortunately — quite a shock, that. I remember Bumfluff’s house-

master wrote and told me that Sticky had been out for a duck, and the

Gubber had snitched a parcel sausage-end and gone goose-over-stump

frogside.

Edmund: Meaning…?

George: I don’t know, sir, but I read in the Times that they’d both been

killed.

Edmund: And Bumfluff himself…?

George: Copped a packet at Galipoli with the Aussies — so had Drippy and

Strangely Brown. I remember we heard on the first morning of the

Somme when Titch and Mr Floppy got gassed back to Blighty.

Edmund: Which leaves…?

George: Gosh, yes, I, I suppose I’m the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers

still alive. Lumme, there’s a thought — and not a jolly one.

Edmund: My point exactly, George.

George: A chap might get a bit mizz — if it wasn’t the thought of going

over the top tomorrow! Right, sir: Permission to get weaving…

Edmund: Permission granted.

George: Thank you, sir.