Tommy says they are very brave because they don't know what fear is; his father told him that. He says no one has ever seen a Gherkin blub; if they have to, they go and do it somewhere else.
There is only one way you can kill them. Tommy knows the way, but he daren't tell anyone.
Tommy says that when they want to kill a man they prowl after him for five miles, and then come back as silently as they went. He says it is no good shooting at them, because they are not there.
He showed me how they killed people. They come up behind you and catch you round the neck, and it's no good saying, "Shut up," because they don't understand English; then you make a noise like gargling for sore throats, and that's how they know you are dead. It makes the people very angry, Tommy says.
If they take a dislike to anyone, you are sure to get killed, because they prowl after you until they do. And when you come to look at the dead man, you can see he has died a horrible death, and if you turn him over there isn't a mark on him. You see he didn't hear them coming. That's what Tommy Brown told me.
Tommy says a Gherkin once saved his father's life by killing a snake. Tommy's father gave the Gherkin a lot of money to put in his pocket, but he wouldn't take it. The Gherkins don't have pockets, Tommy says.
Tommy says, that if two Germans stood back to back to see who was the taller, a Gherkin could cut through both of them with his two-handled knife, and it would be done so quickly that neither of the Germans would know which was killed first. They do it by practice, Tommy told me. They always use two-handled knives, so that when they are tired with using one handle they can use the other.
You can never catch a Gherkin because on the slightest movement in the bushes they throw a rope up into the air and climb up it, then they pull the rope up after them.
Tommy says that Gherkins wear turbots on their heads. He says that they wear very few clothes, but they don't catch rheumatism because it is not known there.
When Tommy's mother told him that people were sending presents to the Indian troops we had a meeting about it. We dug a deep trench in Tommy's garden and held the meeting there; Tommy didn't want the Germans to know.