... untold war stories number 41 - the biro ...

Quite a few people state that one of the few positive developments of the Second World War was the development of the Biro pen.

However the Odtaa Files believe that the Biro was in fact developed as a particularly nasty weapon.

For example little documentation has been made on what happens when you tread on a broken Biro in bare feet. Not only are you cut - but fragments of the pen break off into the wound. After a few days the wound gets worse and doctors have great difficulty in identifying the cause as plastic cannot be detected by X-ray or ultra sound. In the case of my daughter she was off work for a couple of weeks and on crutches for another - just because of a Biro ambush.

Biros are also a cause of problems - happy people argue about, fight about and steal Biros from each other - which quickly destroys morale and causes conflict. And now I find out that on average, 100 people choke to death on Biro pens every year.

Clearly there was a German Biro strategy in the war to take out Britain using the Biro. These plastic were going to be dropped all over Britain - sowing dissent as people fought over them. Fifth columnists could carry one of the pens innocently - snap one in two and drop the broken containers in places where people were bare footed - eg swimming baths. That and the encouragement of people to chew their pens - while thinking what to write - would have inflicted severe causalities We have to thank the few for defeating the German bombers in the air and thus preventing this subtle - but severe threat - in our hour of need.