When I was a kid I used to really enjoy reading war comics, like Victor and Battle Action. There was one story that appeared in a collection (possibly a ‘Commando’ half size) called ‘In the Pipe’.

The story went like this…

Our brave tommy hero is with his fellow soldiers pinned down by gunfire from an advancing German troop. They are on one side of a clearing in a wood; our boys are on the other. The trouble is that our boys are running out of ammo. Fortunately, the leader of the german troop is a complete coward. He keeps ordering some of his men to attack, who are then cut down by the British guns. But eventually the Brits run out of ammunition.

Our boys are close enough to be able to hear what is going on on the German side, and they pick up the idea that the German leader is unpleasant and unpopular. Then our brave tommy hero has the idea – maybe one of his comrades was shot when he still had a bullet ‘in the pipe’ – so he searches through the guns of his fellow soldiers until he finds a bullet – the last bullet that the Brits have.

Meanwhile, the German troop leader sees that the Brits have stopped firing, and thinks that they have run out of ammunition – giving him the ‘courage’ to lead an attack himself. So he strides out into the clearing at the head of his troops – and our brave tommy hero shoots him dead with the last bullet.

The German second-in-command (a corporal I guess) says to the rest of his troop ‘that’s enough fighting for one day’ – and so our brave tommy hero lives to fight another day.

~~~

I wasn’t planning to say much about the story. It’s just that it’s been on my mind a bit recently, because after the great dislocation, there will be an awful lot of ‘inventory’ lying around waiting to be used. So those communities that remain will have sufficient resources to keep elements of civilisation – like blogging – going for quite a while. We won’t be able to build lots of new computers. But there will be lots of old computers lying around waiting to be cannibalised for spare parts….