Keen

I remember as a kid asking my father about his experience with firearms during the war. He said he'd learned to fire a Tommy gun. It never occurred to me to ask my mother.

Because little boys in the 1950s were the most frightful male chauvinist pigs.

Yesterday this fragile piece of paper surfaced,



Dated 24 April 1942, It confirms that my mother has been trained in the use of :

Machine gun
Thompson sub machine gun
Rifle
Service revolver
Mills grenades

and has shown herself an apt pupil. The word "keen" crops up three times.