CHAPTER THREE

I had been back from leave at the Army Pay Corps barracks for only a day or so when I went down with severe stomach cramps. The camp doctor depressed the right side of my abdomen, I gasped in pain and by the afternoon I was in a private room at Worthingthorpe Hospital scheduled for an operation to remove my appendix that evening.

It was the first time in my life that I had been admitted to hospital. My step-mother Adalind arived at my bedside at around three o'clock, and shortly afterwards a young student nurse wheeled in a trolley equipped with a bowl of steaming hot water, a shaving brush, a cut-throat razor and a towel.

"Your step-son's abdominal hair has to be removed prior to surgery," she announced to Adalind and, opening the razor, offered it to her. "Seeing that he's nineteen,there is no way I personally will be shaving his genitals," she snapped and with that abandoned the trolley and left us to it.

Adalind rose and said she would fetch the ward sister, and returned with this person a few minutes later. Ingeborg, or Inge as she preferred to be called was a good-looking, slender woman rather broad in the shoulder, six feet in height in her stockinged feet, late thirties to early forties in age, with golden hair and plenty of it piled up inside her starched cap. She had green eyes black-lined at the outer corners for a somewhat exotic look, regular features but her mouth was small and could look severe when severity was called for, as befitted her station in life. A magnificent creature, perhaps descended from the Valkyries.

"If you've no objection your step-mother can stay," Inge said, "I know you're a big boy but no doubt she's seen it often enough before," and with that she locked the door and returned to my bedside. "Take off your pyjama bottoms," she commanded, and then sat at my hip to work on my pubic hair with a pair of scissors. I did what I could to maintain decorum but my penis was soon erect. I must have looked sheepish for she said, "Don't worry about it, it's not the first time I've excited a handsome boy young enough to be my son. By the way, why were you circumcised?"

"As a baby the foreskin stopped me peeing properly and so the surgeons removed it."

"I think his penis has a lovely shape without it," Adalind chimed in and they both laughed. I felt discomfited, but not really put out.

"Right," the ward sister said, soaping the shaving brush. "Now I'm going to shave off the stubble on your testes and pubis." It was a lovely experience to have Inge soap me, and then begin careful scraping with the cut-throat razor. Nevertheless I was rather fearful of this instrument and so maintained a respectful silence.

"Pubic hair is unhygienic," the ward sister told my step-mother. "You should shave him down there regularly." At this all three of us broke out into uproarious laughter causing Inge to put her forefinger to her lips and point towards the door.

After about five minutes Inge wiped my testes and pubis dry with the towel and stood back to admire her handiwork.

"Not bad if I say so myself. During the war I did this for soldiers hundreds of times." With a look at Adalind went on, "Now this last bit can be tricky and so I'd like you to hold his penis upright and stiff while I shave off the hair around the base." Glancing at me she asked. "Is that OK with you?". I was a little surprised that it required two women to carry out this simple process but I supposed my hands and arms might get in the way and so just shrugged my shoulders.

Adalind kept giving me grins during the sixty seconds it took to remove the wispy hair around the lower inch of my penis and finally everybody sighed with relief that it was over and done with. In her secret diary which I got to peruse several years later, Adalind described the closing stages of this operation:

"...Holding his prick upright for a minute or so I got a good look at it. Inge knew what I was doing but didn't care. Erect it was seven inches long and straight with a nice thick girth. The shaft was brownish and the head intensified to crimson at maximum stiffness. It must be really sensitive with all those tiny pimples around the rim, I thought. Inge said she hadn't seen a rim like that before, and she should know.

"...Inge told Wulf she was going to smear his penis with baby oil to prevent dryness and soreness. She did this by running her oily fingertips up and down the urethra and the back of the shaft which had not been one of the places shaved, Within a few seconds Wulf stifled a gasp and his ejaculation came up very fast. The first two or three spurts twisted out to spatter the apron of the ward-sister's uniform, the semen festooned her fingers and spattered his abdomen. "Oh dearie me," she said, "I had no idea that that would happen!"

"...He writhed his abdomen as he was ejaculating, gasping at the sensation and crying "Ohfuckohfuck, Inge". It lasted about twenty-five seconds until his prick was finally struggling to keep up its head.

"...'That's one way of getting rid of his erection,' Inge said and we both laughed. Then she packed up the trolley and wheeled it out leaving me to wipe up my step-son's semen."

So much for the account of my step-mother Adalind. If she thought I was going to be at home for a week while she cared for my lower parts she was out of luck. The operation itself went off routinely and within a day or so I was back in the Worthingthorpe barracks sick bay. To my chagrin now I had male Medical Corps nursing staff, competent but not pretty, and no females to look after me. After forty-eight hours I was returned to light duties.

It was to be on my twentieth birthday a few months later, upon my discharge from National Service and return home to Adalind with bag and baggage, that I discovered what part the sunken German coaster Horstfels had played in the entire relationship involving the three of us, casting forward its dread shadow from over twenty years previously.