Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [15]
≡ The act of being sent sideways, see p. 64.
A night freak was Gunner Lichenstein: he’d suddenly sit bolt upright in bed, shout “Oh, the Goats,” then lie down again. Gunner ‘Spiv’ Convine would dip a sleeping man’s hand in a bucket of cold water and make him widdle the bed.
There was Lance Bombardier Dodds who slept in the Q. stores. He aspired to Opera. His powerful voice was not improved by singing a quarter-tone flat, especially as he started after lights out. We decided to act. One night as he lay singing “Your tiny hand is frozen,” he must have heard the door open:
“Who is it?” he said. Hurling a bucket of water, I replied, “Puccini.”
This crude military life was terrible for our Jehovah’s Witness, Bombardier MacDonald. Through all the vulgarity and blasphemy his voice would come out of the darkness. “I tell ye all repent! The day of judgement is at hand! Armageddon is nigh, only they that believe will be saved.”
“Piss off!”
“Mock ye now, but hear me! When Jehovah cometh, you will stand to be judged!”
“Bollocks.”
Despite these witty replies he maintained a non-stop attack on military morals. Like most fanatics, he didn’t enjoy religion, he suffered from it. Every weekend we’d find his pamphlets on our beds. A terrible end they came to. But the pressure was too much and gradually MacDonald became less and leas religious: he started drinking and swearing (“I tell you the bloody day is at hand”). The end of the holy man came one revealing night. And it came to pass that Gunner James Devine was on midnight guard when he was awakened by a rhythmic thumping from the back of the coal shed. Investigation showed Bombardier MacDonald, his trousers round his ankles, having a late-night knee-trembler with a local fat girl. The noise was her head thumping against the shed as the holy man pressed home his watch-tower. Gunner Devine watched until the climax was nigh, then shouted, “Halt! Who comes there?” The effect was electric. MacDonald ran into the night shouting ‘Armageddon’↓
≡ I can only presume it meant ‘Arm-a-geddon out of here’
The girl, still in a sexual coma, was given Gunner Devine’s rifle to hold, while he terminated her contract. Truly they also serve who stand and wait.
B.S.M. ‘Jumbo’ Day thought he would test the military reflex of the Battery by sounding the six G’s on the bugle. The call demanded immediate muster by all ranks, but no one in this conscripted army knew that. During the next fifteen minutes, alone in a dark field, the B.S.M. blew the six G’s until he had fits, a hernia, and realised the age of the horse was over. He was knocked out in the early Montgomery Purge. Anyhow, we had learned our lesson: we knew now what six G’s on the bugle meant. Hernia, fits, and your ticket.
Gunner Mosman. He’d get blind drunk, stagger back by 23:59 hours, feel his way into the barrack room then urinate in a corner. One day a well-spoken recruit, Gunner Donald, arrived. “Do you mind if I sleep in this corner?” Of course we didn’t mind. That night, we heard the sound of Mosman streaming on the sleeping form of Gunner Donald, and strange damp screams from the victim who was a mouth breather. Gunner Donald bided his time. Next night he returned the compliment full in the sleeping Norman’s face. It wasn’t long before Part Two Orders read: “The practice of urinating on sleeping comrades will cease forthwith.” One Bombardier, who shall remain a nameless Bastard, had it in for all of us. Revenge was very sweet. One night he came in stoned out of his