(Usual disclaimers apply)
15 year old Percy Fletcher rubbed his hands together in a vain attempt to get warm. It was a raw winter's day when the thermometer had barely risen above zero. The city of London was shrouded by fog. This was in 1947.
Percy had travelled up to the big city with a school party of boys and teachers from Aldershot. After leaving a crowded tube train, the boy had bcome separated from his group. He had walked for miles and was now hopelessly lost. In the gloom there was not even a police officer he could ask for assistance.
Out of the fog a well-built young man in army uniform suddenly appeared. Percy walked right into him.
"Watch where you're going !" The man spoke sharply. He had an East London accent.
"Sorry", the frightened youngster whimpered.
"What's the matter, lad?", the soldier asked.
Percy told him about coming from Aldershot with the school party and how he'd got lost.
"Well blow me down ! My barracks are in Aldershot. I'll be travelling back there in a about an hour. Stick with me and I'll deliver you to your Pa and Ma, safe and sound".
"It's just my Mum. Dad got killed in the war".
"Sorry, son". The soldier put his arm around Percy's thin shoulders. "Tell you what, there's a pub near here. What say you and me get a bite to eat and then we'll catch that train ?"
"Great!" said Percy, eyes shining.
They walked along the pavement a short distance to the brightly-lit Albert Arms. The soldier ushered Percy through the doorway. The room was warm and hazy with cigarette smoke.
"Wotcher, Jack!" called the barman. "Does that sprog belong to you? Your wicked past caught up with you at last ?"
"Nah! This is .. wotcher name kid?"
"Percy".
"How do, Percy". Both men grinned.
"Rustle us up some grub. We're starving".
The food was plain but nourishing. The soldier wiped his plate clean with a crust of bread. Percy did the same.
The soldier and the boy stood up.
"I've got to have a pee", Percy whispered urgently.
The soldier took him into the men's toilets. They stood side by side at the urinal. Percy's thin stream mixed with the soldier's torrent. Jack finished, shook his big penis and then buttoned himself up.
"Time we got our skates on. We've got a train to catch".
The tube station was close to the Albert Arms. In no time at all the soldier had cashed in his travel warrant and purchased two tickets. Then they caught the train. Man and boy sat together as the train chugged through the slums of the big city.
Eventually, they reached their destination. Jack insisted on walking Percy home. The boy's mother, frantic with worry, was overjoyed to be reunited with her son. They went through to the living room.
"What were you thinking of? Running off like that?" Percy's mother asked him.
"Dunno".
"I'll give you 'dunno'!" his mother cried, slapping Percy around the head.
"Not the head", the soldier said, firmly. "You could damage his hearing".
"What would YOUR mother have done?", she asked the young soldier.
"Told my father to tan my backside. And he'd have done it and all", Jack said, feelingly.
"Percy doesn't have a father".
"I know. I'm sorry". Jack shuffled his feet.
"Would you do it?" Percy's mother asked the soldier.
"Mum ..", pleaded Percy who suddenly looked younger than his fifteen years.
"Quiet, you". She turned to Jack. "Well?"
"Tan his backside?"
"Yes".
The soldier scratched his firm buttocks. "A good hiding might just stop him from doing anything so daft again. All right. You're on".
"Thanks, Jack. I'll just take the dog for a long walk". She went into the hall and pulled her coat on. The front door slammed behind her.
The soldier sat in an easy chair and looked up at Percy.
"I looked after you today, didn't I?"
The boy looked at the floor. "Yes", he whispered.
"Well, I want to look after you now. Teach you a lesson you won't forget".
Percy's face was sullen. "But .."
"But nothing. You have a choice, Percy. Hide in your room reading a book. Avoiding responsibility. Bet you do a lot of that. Or, go to your room and take off your trousers and underpants. I'll be there in five minutes to see which you've decided". The soldier picked up a newspaper and scanned the headlines.
"Second door on the left, upstairs" blurted out the boy as he left the room.
Jack waited ten minutes before going up. Percy was standing beside his bed, half naked.
"Good lad", said the soldier. He threw a couple of pillows onto the single bed. "Lay on top of that".
Percy got into position, his taut, firm hemispheres sticking right up in the air. Jack unlooped his belt and doubled it with a crack. He raised the belt high before bringing it thudding down, across the boy's upturned buttocks.
"Aaaagh!" yelled Percy. A broad red stripe adorned the boy's quivering mounds. That leather rose and fell until every square inch of Percy's bottom was beet-red. Nothing in his short life had ever hurt so bad yet he was grateful to the soldier for caring enough to correct him.
"I guess you've had enough", said Jack, quietly. "Come back downstairs when you're ready".
It was some minutes before the teary-eyed lad entered the living room.
"You ok?" Jack asked.
"Yes", replied the boy. "Thanks".
His mother returned and Percy threw his arms around her. He apologised.
The woman flashed a grateful smile of thanks to the young soldier who tip-toed out of the house and then walked briskly towards the barracks.
"What time do you call this?" an angry superior barked at Jack.
'Strewth', the soldier thought. 'I've gone and missed curfew'.
Two guards marched him into a cell. Jack cursed himself for the predicament. He'd be up on a charge in the morning. Loss of pay and leave stared him in the face.
An officer stopped outside Jack's cell.
"You have been a naughty boy!" He smiled with that supercilious smirk common to ex-public schoolboys. "It's been a quiet night. You could take an unofficial punishment and we'd forget all about it".
"What sort of 'unofficial punishment, Sir?"
"Twelve cuts of the cane. Bare arse".
Jack thought of Percy. Tanning the boy's backside was the reason he was in this predicament. He looked at the officer.
"You're on, Sir".
The man unlocked the gate and marched Jack into a larger room. There was a padded vaulting horse and a selection of canes.
"Trousers and underpants down", snapped the officer. Jack duly obliged. "Bend over and grasp the end of horse".
The officer admired the soldier's still-boyish buttocks. They reminded him of Ashleigh, his fag at Repley, an insolent boy he'd been forced to thrash at least once a month. He licked his thin lips.
Jack had been caned on the hands a few times at school. 'The bum's bigger so it won't hurt so much', he reasoned.
Thud! The cane landed. Searing, burning pain engulfed his backside. Jack's head shot up with surprise. The officer waited until Jack's bum had gone off the boil, so to speak, before unleashing the next brutal cut.
The soldier had no idea a caning could hurt so much. The officer who had been caning boys and men since he was 17 years old, knew exactly how to exact the maximum amount of pain from his victim. By the sixth stroke Jack was quietly sobbing but he managed to survive the entire thrashing without crying out.
"Get dressed", the officer barked. Jack slowly pulled his clothes up, over his battered behind. He wiped his eyes.
"Quick march!" The officer took the soldier back to the two men at the gate. "Release him without charge". He disappeared into an office and slammed the door.
"Get our botty smacked, did we?", asked one of the guards with a grin.
"My oath!" said Jack as they let him through the gate. He walked slowly back to the barracks.
That night Percy dreamed about Jack giving him a hiding and, surprisingly, experienced a nocturnal emission. At the same time Jack was busy dreaming about whacking his young friend's pink behind except each time the leather landed it was Jack's buttocks that got hurt. A pleasurable senssation overwhelmed the man. 'Haven't had one of these for years' Jack thought as his hand touched the sticky wetness. Then he drifted back to sleep.
The next morning, the headmaster called out Percy's name at Assembly. The boy waited nervously outside the man's study. His bottom was still throbbng from the hiding Jack had given him. The Head swept down the corridor, his black gown billowing out behind him. Percy followed the Head into the inner sanctum.
The man demanded to know just what Percy had been playing at? Running away from the school party had caused a great deal of anxiety and ruined the day out for all of them. Percy muttered about turning to watch a steam locomotive on another track and how when he'd looked back, everyone had gone.
"Totally unacceptable! You must pay for all the trouble you have caused".
The Head rapped on the window and beckoned to someone outside. "Unfortunately, arthritis means I can no longer deal with a boy as severely as is sometimes warranted". There was a knock on the door.
"Come!"
The door opened and a swarthy young groundsman came into the study.
"Sir?"
The Head gestured at the hapless boy. "Thrash him. The full six strokes. Wish it could be more".
"Right-oh, Sir", said the groundsman chirpily. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. Percy's eyes widened at the sight of compact muscles and bulging biceps. There was an earthy, unknown, dangerous quality about the man. 'It's the Romany in him', thought the Head.
A cane was selected and swished through the air.
"Now young sir", the groundsman said politely. "If you'll just bend over this chair. Grip the edge of the seat so your arse, I mean bottom, is sticking right up in the air. That's it".
Percy felt warm hands folding back his school jacket. There was movement and then the boy's buttocks exploded into flames. The hard stroke of the cane bit into flesh already very tender from Jack's belt.
"Owwww!" howled the boy, much to the gratification of the headmaster.
The groundsman wished the Old Man would let him cane boys on the bare arse. He put all his considerable frustration into the next stroke and the boy responded accordingly.
"Poetry in motion", thought the Head, admiringly.
The groundsman unleashed three incredibly powerful cuts 'rapid fire'. The third was just landing when the boy felt the first. His knees buckled as wave after wave of serious hurt emanated from his flogged posterior. His cries went unheeded. The groundsman thought Percy was a bit of a sissy making all that fuss over a simple arse-tickling.
The sixth stroke was the piece de resistance. The stick lashed Percy's tender 'underbum' - where the buttocks meet the thighs. 'He'll feel that for a day or two' thought the groundsman, satisfied with a job well done. He replaced the cane, touched the edge of his black hair as a mark of respect to the Head, and left the study.
Percy slowly stood upright.
"Let that be a lesson to you", said the Head, not unkindly. "Dry your eyes and cut along to class".
The lad walked slowly down the corridor and into the boys' toilets. . He dropped his trousers and underpants and placed his burning flesh against the cold tile wall. He thought the groundsman was a 'vicious thug', unlike Jack who had provided less testing correction. Thinking about the soldier put a smile back on Percy's face. He got dressed again and went to his classroom.