Wessex and Mercia

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

In desperate combat for the city of London the army of Wessex last week locked in a death grapple with the army of Mercia. Rain fell and fell until even Noah's contemporaries would have been convinced that there was going to be a flood. And finally after everyone had been soaked to the bone, the umpires decided that the sham battle had saved London for Mercia.

But there was a casualty. Prince Henry, third son of the royal house, galloping at the head of his company of Mercian Hussars fetlock deep in mud, dawn a country road, was caught in the open by advancing Wessex tanks, spitting death from their three-pound guns. He dismounted and stood grinning by the roadside in his steel helmet, crying: "I guess we're out of action!" even before the umpires wrote him down as "killed in the field of battle."