The mine field had been there since an invasion seemed imminent. That was seven years ago, but clearing the sandy scrub land was a low priority. No farmer was missing a crop. The bracken and gorse and broom covered ten acres were the last of the village common land and no one had a use for it. Except the children.
The children began to encroach on the common from the start because no one was warned about the mines. When the army took up the dragon's teeth that blocked the road and took up most of the coiled barbed wire, they left no indication that the mines remained. It was two years before they came back with signs.
By then the children had been riding their bicycles on trails they made through the gorse. There was a place where they flew over the crumbling sand cliff on their bicycles and for a second or two were airborne. Eyes closed, teeth clenched, hands gripping the handle bars before crash landing to fly between the bracken stalks and down to the nettles and brambles at the bottom.
Gordon and Mary were the best of friends. All summer they played on the common. Found a linnet's nest in the gorse. Found an underground bunker that you entered through the top. Empty cement rooms - not so much as an initial on the wall. No tramp had found the bunker. So Gordon and Mary were the first to explore the empty rooms and search in vain for something - a set of binoculars, the pips from a uniform - but there was nothing because no soldiers ever waited in the bunker, holding their breath as the Germans passed over head.
More fun were the caves they built in the sand cliff. Two quite big rooms. They had candles and talked of spending the night. They were in the cave when they heard and felt the explosion. Their handiwork collapsed around them. Mary's nose was filled with sand. Breathing was almost impossible.
Spit, she thought. If it comes back on you that's up. But Mary could not spit. She could not breathe, but she could see light and she scrabbled, choking into the air.
``The kids!'' she said, ``the little kids were up there.'' They struggled through the brambles and up to the road.
P.C. Brown had arrived already on his policeman's bicycle with the double cross bars.
``An ambulance is coming,'' he said.
It didn't kill the boy. Just took a leg. Next day Gordon and Mary were back at the cliff - digging another cave.