There was the game of canoneras. Apparently the name of this game came from the overcoat brass buttons of the Royal Artillery Battalion which depicted the traditional cannon. These buttons, one side flat, the other oval, were hammered down into thin chips — canoneras.

   The game was played by drawing a chalk line about six feet away from a three inch hole in the road that some boy had dug out. You had to play first with two canoneras, trying to score by putting both chips in the hole. If one went in and the other out, your opponent would try to put both his canoneras in the hole and by so doing, win the game. You then started game number two with three canoneras and so on.

   We used to get the buttons from the soldiers who came up from Casemates to Moorish Castle on a daily basis. We used to beg the soldiers for their regimental buttons. Sometimes they used to ask us for a favour in return, “Here’s a sixpence, will you get me a bottle of lemonade?”

   An alternative to the canonera was to flatten beer bottle stoppers and use them as chips, just like the canoneras. One canonera was worth 4 or 5 flattened beer stoppers.

   The soldiers were behind the barrier wall and huge iron gate kept locked by the M.O.D. On very hot summers’ days, on that wall, I have heard the chicharra (cicada) chirping away like mad, something I haven’t heard since.

   On the other side of the wall was what we boys used to call la montanita (the little mountain), and down below there were huge rounded rocks that we used to play between by using a big tarpaulin over the rocks as a cover over our heads. That would be our H.Q. when we were playing soldiers. Two older boys were the captains and us smaller boys, the foot soldiers.

   One day while playing on the podium next to the huge locked iron gate, I jumped up next to the wall leading down the steps to Crutchett’s Ramp, to get my hands on the top of the wall and climb up. Next to me was another boy, Jaime Ferrary. First my chest was on top of the wall, then I slowly pushed forwards until my belly was on top of the wall.

   I don’t know what happened but I lost my balance and fell head first onto the montanita. I landed first on some sort of a rampart and then rolled down over the side, on top of the huge rocks below, before falling down the wall and the steps leading to Crutchett ’ s Ramp. The height of the wall was about five feet. I was ever so lucky that a man (Willy Ferrary) just happened to be talking to some women on the steps and I practically fell on top of him.

   He picked me up and at that point I lost consciousness. I came round in his arms on the way to hospital at the lower side of Castle Steps, near the Royal Drain (El Cano Real). I heard the man say “I can’t bear it any more, someone please take this boy to hospital”. I remember he was breathing heavily and must have been exhausted carrying me, at a quick step, to hospital. At that point I passed out again. Someone else then picked me up and I was taken to the nearby hospital.

   That man (Willy Ferrary) who saved my life has now passed on, bless his soul. His son (Momo Ferrary) was also one of the boys of The Road. These days when we meet casually in Main Street, we talk of the olden days. Sometimes we talk about this incident and I’m reminded how lucky I was that his father just happened to be at the right place at the right time, otherwise my injuries would have been far more serious.

   I regained consciousness in a hospital bed, I supposed about 3 or 4 in the morning. There were no broken bones but I did have head injuries, lucky nothing serious. I was discharged from hospital later in the day.

   On arrival at The Road (La Calera), the boys came around wishing me well. It was good to be back home and the friendship of the boys did wonders towards my full recovery. That friendship of all the boys from Road To The Lines, that camaraderie, continues to this very day.

   Now when I meet the boy that was next to me on the podium wall (Jaime Ferrary), he sometimes says to me in jest “I didn’t push you over the wall,” and we both laugh. Other times when we meet he says “I did push you over the wall, so there!!” And we also laugh. The fact remains that he remembers and he always wishes me well.

   Another game on the Road to the Lines was playing at soldiers. If we went to a matinee film on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm, and the film was about the three musketeers, we would later play on the road with swords, or a piece of wood, and pretend we were Errol Flyn. “On your guard!” — and we boys would cross swords and play.

   If the matinee film was a cowboy film we would play at cowboys and Indians. We would shout, slap our mouths with one hand “ooouuuuh”. We would be Geronimo, pretending to be an Indian, or a cowboy like Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Roy Rogers, Buck Jones, or the Lone Ranger with Tonto. “Bang, Bang,” would be the sound of our toy guns with triquitraque (small explosive caps that came in a strip), or we would use a playful bow and arrow with a rubber sucker at the point and pretend to be an Indian.

  There was also a round explosive stone, like a pebble, about the size of a big marble, which gave off a bang every time we threw it against a wall — sometimes it ricocheted against the opposite wall and gave off another bang. We used to call it a ‘bomb’. It only lasted for so many bangs before the explosive element would go dead and it would be discarded.

  There was a pretend ‘war’ with the boys from Lower Castle Ramp. They would come down the steps of the Moorish Castle clock and make challenging advances at us boys from the La Calera. We would wave our wooden make-believe swords and challenge them from a distance, or use our catapults to shoot small stones. There was never any physical contact.

   Our ‘frontier’ was by the water fountain at the entrance to the callejon (a narrow lane between two walls) though sometimes we used to play further up the callejon, where there was a resbaloso (a ‘slippery’ — what looked like a gigantic wedge on the corner of two walls), just past the military search light cabin, one of several searchlights that used to criss-cross the Bay of Gibraltar on New Year's Eve with their searchlight beam. We used to climb up to the top of the resbaloso and then slide down. If the boys from Lower Castle Ramp heard or saw us playing in the area of the resbaloso, they would shout challenging remarks at us from the far end of the callejon.

  One time the ‘enemy’, as we used to call them, were gathered together on the callejon at a distant of about 100 yards from our side, waving our wooden swords at them from a distance. That time the ‘enemy’ used an old iron kettle which they threw along the callejon as if it was a bowls game.  The old iron kettle came down the callejon ever so quickly and hit the opposite wall with such force that it cracked into pieces. One piece hit a boy (Umberto Massetti) on the leg. A piece of that old iron kettle was embedded in his leg and he needed hospital treatment. As far as I can recall that was the one and only time that we suffered a casualty, playing soldiers with the boys living at the far end of the callejon at Lower Castle Ramp — our ‘enemy’. Recently I was in a shop, about 65 years after that incident, buying something for my car.

   When I went to pay, I noticed that the cashier at the check-out was an elderly man. Also in front of me was another elderly man. A second look and I recognised him as being one of the boys of Road to the Lines, Johnny Ferrary, next door neighbour No. 16.  I tapped him on the shoulder and when he turned around, he too recognised me as one of the boys from La Calera days. I had not seen him for years so we embraced and after asking after each others health, the cashier, who had listened to our conversation, butted in and smiling said that he was from Lower Castle Ramp. My friend and I exchanged glances, smiled and simultaneously said “The enemy!”

    We all laughed together. The three of us reminisced of the good old days and the incident with the old iron kettle was mentioned. We then parted company, each of us with our own personal memories of those childhood days.  Regrettably it has come to my ears that seven of the Road to the Lines boys have now passed on. The boys that we were at one time are now in the front line and when your time is up, all that is left is the memories. Life has its happy moments but also the sad moments. We boys of La Calera had a happy childhood.