An old man’s memoires may seem an unlikely subject for a children’s novel but Billy the Kid by former children’s laureate
Michael Morpurgo is a spellbinding read.
The story begins with Billy, a Chelsea pensioner, marking his eightieth birthday. He is thinking about his party to be held later that day but even more important, anticipating watching the Chelsea versus Liverpool match that same afternoon.
This is the story of Billy’s life long love affair with
football and Chelsea Football Club. His dream came true when in the summer of 1935, aged fifteen, Billy signed papers with the club. No place in the team to begin with, Billy’s job was to clean the player’s boots, keep the ground tidy and learn his craft. His first game came two years later, playing for Chelsea Reserves against Arsenal Reserves. Life couldn’t get any better for Billy – but it could get a lot worse!
When war broke out in 1939, Billy’s elder
brother Joe enlisted, only to be killed at Dunkirk. Devastated by the death of his brother, Billy joins the Royal Army Medical Corps – ‘the football part of my life was over,’ he sadly says.
Billy’s harrowing wartime experiences are recorded; the battle of Tobruk and a morning spent burying the dead, being taken a prisoner of war by the Italian army and later escaping when Italy was defeated. After a brief home leave, Billy was posted abroad again, this time into the horror that was Belsen.
When Billy’s ambulance explodes a landmine, doctors say he is lucky to be alive, but that he’ll never play football again, his leg was too badly damaged.
So began Billy’s decline. His family gone, his fitness compromised and unable to forget the sights he saw in Belsen, Billy takes refuge in alcohol.
But football is never far from the plot; it was his boyhood dream and ultimately it is his salvation as well.