Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures, #1)

by K.J. Charles

“I was out there the whole time. Four years and change, not demobbed till late ’19. I was at Ypres and Passchendaele. I did fourteen trench raids.” “Christ!” Kim said, sounding genuinely startled. “Fourteen? Do you have a boxful of medals?” “Pawned them.” “Sorry?” “My grateful nation wasn’t grateful enough to give me a job. I pawned my medals to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I’ll tell you what, the Military Cross doesn’t fetch a great deal, no matter how many bars you have on it. The pawnbroker told me I should have tried for a Victoria Cross. That would be worth something, he said.” Kim’s lips tightened. “Perhaps someone should have a word with him.” “It’s a seller’s market. Did you not read about the chap who marched down Whitehall with his pawn tickets pinned on his uniform where his medals should have been? Anyway, the point is, I know about doing your duty out there. And what you said about honour is balls.” Kim raised his brows. Will pressed on. “Sitting around in the trenches, whittling and telling dirty jokes we’d all heard a dozen times. Going out with your mates knowing a load of them would die to win a hundred yards of ground that Jerry would get back next time, and then doing it over and over again. I got stuck in a shellhole with a sergeant once, under a barrage. We were there for hours, sat in freezing water if you could call it that, keeping our heads down, and once it got dark we crawled back through mud. Afterwards he said to me, ‘When...