GREAT BRITAIN: Billiards, Bombs, Beer

Well known to the police of London’s East End is 25-year-old Costerboy John Thomas Cain. Often enough they have had him up for piddling misdemeanors, blocking traffic with his barrow, chucking unsold vegetables about at the day’s end. Last week, however, the Metropolitan Police would have looked the other way if he had overturned his barrow in Piccadilly Circus. For John Thomas Cain was sporting one of the highest awards for gallantry that his country can give a civilian, the George Medal. He is, so far, the youngest Briton to wear it.

John Thomas Cain has three hobbies: snooker pool, beer drinking and rescuing bombees (score to date: twelve single-handed rescues, 44 assists). Playing pool one night, John heard the crash of a bomb, looking out of the billiard parlor saw a paint factory down the street go up in a stinking inferno of flames and fumes. With four policemen John dug into the basement, slithered through a four-foot flood of paint, dodged arcing electric wires. On doors they hauled ten workmen into the street, six alive. As they were carrying the last one away the building shuddered and fell. Then John Thomas Cain went to a pub and had a beer.