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Scared the living daylights out of me when I was a kid !
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One what I writ ages ago…
I always rise well before breakfast when we stay in Jersey. I throw on yesterdays clothes and walk briskly along the cliff tops to Groznéz Castle after which it’s time for a shower and a change of attire before eating. It’s a regular procedure for me. An observer might say that they could almost set their clocks by it.
The route takes me past numerous reminders of the World War Two German occupation. The marks they left on the island are literally set in stone. Gun emplacements and underground bunkers litter the coastline. It isn’t difficult to imagine them being built by poor souls forced into slave labour or as still being manned by the German conquerors. One can almost see soldiers, mostly ordinary men under any other circumstances, chatting about home and family. Perhaps trying to justify their presence on the island by thinking of themselves as crusaders rather than oppressors and invaders.
One outstanding structure is the Target Direction Finding Tower perched on the clifftop at St. Ouens Bay. The tower stands perhaps one hundred feet high and has a vista of nearly all of the lonely North Jersey coastline. I have paused there many times on my solitary walks to Groznéz Castle. If I had been walking there fifty-five years ago my approach would have been monitored by a soldier manning a machine gun pointing at me through one of the ominous looking gun slits set into the side of the circular tower.
The early morning sun shone brightly on the thirteenth of August promising a hot day. I was on my way back from Groznéz and looking forward to breakfast. The size and strength of the tower has always impressed me and I stopped for a while to examine it once again. I went around the seaward side to gaze at the view that the Germans must have looked on all those years ago. A slight slip filled my shoe with a few small chips of granite. I tried to ignore them but it was clear that walking would be painful without getting rid of them.
With a sigh, I sat on the roof of the bunker attached to the tower and took off my shoe. A mans voice came from somewhere behind me.
“If you had proper boots on you wouldn’t be troubled with that” he said.
“Your right” I replied banging my shoe on the concrete roof “I really am going to buy a pair one of these……” my voice trailed off. Something was wrong. Something about the words? Yes maybe that was it. Possibly it was that I hadn’t heard any footsteps approaching on the gravely surface. There had been no one at the tower as I walked towards it. I slowly turned around.
Momentarily I thought someone was there, but no, there was only the tower, the rocks and the sea. No sign of anyone. Then a faint smell of tobacco smoke filled my nose. Laying on the ground a few feet away was the still smouldering remains of a cigarette. My skin began to crawl as realisation dawned and fear set in. The voice had spoken to me in German and I had understood it perfectly. Even more incredible was that I had replied in German. A language I know nothing of!
I slipped my shoe on and without tying the lace, walked hastily away. After a while, I stopped and sat on a rock. I looked back towards the distant tower standing out against the skyline. I hoped that I had imagined the whole episode. The implications of it’s reality could dispel a lifetimes scepticism. I swore I would never risk visiting the tower again.
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Excellent @mart It was really descriptive, I think you may have a hidden talent ,A good beginning to a short story maybe … 
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Thanks! 
- I used to write quite lengthily at one time, some even for a small local magazine. It was a good number of years ago though and I seem to have lost the inclination and wordiness for it now. I read some of the things I wrote during those years and wonder if it was really me that used to like to write that much.
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