Simon Jones’ vagina

There is gossip in the trenches, banter and gossip, then more banter and gossip, then some more plain old gossip. Shit, there ain’t much else to do here.

But no matter how much gossip there is, nothing will ever top the discovery that one of the lads wasn’t a lad at all. To this day, barely an hour passes without the words 'Simon Jones’ vagina' passing out of someone’s lips.

Jones’ toileting behaviour had always been unusually discreet in an environ where discretion was as impossible as it was rare. Then one day we found out why: Simon Jones had a vagina.

It had taken a shrapnel wound up Jones’ backside, as we’d never have known. The wound itself was soon patched up, but it led to the medical discovery of the vagina.

“Well what do we have here?” the doctor had asked, which demonstrates the level of medical care festooned on front line troops – medics that don’t recognise a cunt when they see one.

It turns out that Simon Jones wasn’t Simon Jones at all. Jones’ real name was Sally, though the Jones was genuine. She’d faked her birth certificate and fixed her medical (some say by means of a bribe, some suggest something far more sordid), in order to sign up and join her loved one in the trenches.

And she found her boyfriend, there in the same hospital. He’d been severely wounded in combat, but the doctor arranged for her to visit him. By all accounts, her vagina was put to good use that night, but the exertion proved too much for the boyfriend and he died the next day.

Sally was sent home, but that last night with her boyfriend had sowed the seeds for a baby, so her months in the trenches weren’t in vain, and if you’re one of the vets who moan that women can never understand what we went through, check out Sally, as she’s one of the few women that’s actually been there.

If you’re interested, she’s likely to tell you that giving birth was worse than anything she experienced in the front line, arse shrapnel included, and will talk you through every bloody terrible second of the experience if you let her.