Peter Pettigrew's prisoner

Peter Pettigree is a fresh‑face Air Raid Warden, fresh out of school and eager to prove his worth. In a cramped city armory, his drill class is interrupted by a bizarre “practice” sabotage: a mysterious prisoner flings a strange dust into the room, prompting a frantic lesson on delayed‑action bombs. The scenario quickly spirals into a surreal cascade of broken hoses, gun‑powder‑laden sand, and soda‑pop‑diluted extinguishers, turning a routine fire‑drill into a nightmarish puzzle.

Across the chalk‑dusted blackboard, Sergeant McCurdle looms, a hard‑boiled instructor who presses Pettigrew to think instantly while the imagined blaze eats through a warehouse of priceless materiel. As the sergeant rattles off impossibly sabotaged defenses, Pettigree’s confidence flickers, forcing him to confront the very real pressure of home‑front heroics in wartime. The story balances tense, wartime realism with a darkly comic edge, inviting listeners to wonder whether a nervous rookie can rise to the impossible demands of an imagined emergency.