Competition | 2 August 2008

In Competition No 2555 you were invited to write a poem, short story or news report containing the line ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there’.

The line, which I altered slightly to make versification easier, was uttered by General John Sedgwick, a Union general who was shot dead in the American civil war battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, in 1864. Actually, they were his penultimate words (which, according to an eyewitness, he uttered more than once); but he would not have uttered them at all had he known that the enemy had recently acquired much more sophisticated weaponry, thus improving the strike rate of their sharpshooters. Anyway, the e word prompted some suitably surreal entries; commendations go to Martin Parker, Katie Mallett and George Simmers. The winners, printed below, get £30 each while the bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard.

Oh what a vile villain in the Vale of Elah stood,
A Philistine revered and feared throughout the neighbourhood,
A warrior of gargantuan size, indeed, more great than good
Whose awesome height was quite beyond compare.