Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [27]
The sun was setting, and an early crescent moon sailed towards the evening sky. (gunner Edgington lay on his back, looking up the neck of an empty rum bottle. “All gone,” he said. “Gone, all gone,” I said from the same position. We both stood up. He saluted, and fell down. I did an imitation of ‘Last Post’ over his recumbent body. “England’s a beautiful country,” he said and was sick. I don’t know how, but we ended up at the house of a Lady Friend, a pretty girl with hairy legs, who was getting married next week. We sat and listened to her play Chopin. I sang “Chopin, I love you, you know I always will, I love most of your Nocturnes, and I’ll sing them till I’m ill.”
“Lovely,” said Edgington, “Lovely.”
We arrived back at Turkey Road in the dying moments of the Battery’s departure. Great activity. We hoisted long underwear up on the flagpole. We joined a queue going into the Q Stores, and came out with a case of prunes each. A duty Bombardier, insane with military rage, put us under arrest for being late, drunk, improperly dressed, checking an N.C.O., bad language, the murder of Rasputin, and singing the Warsaw Concerto. “Get your kit into that fucking truck!” Piling on to that fucking truck, we drove into the night towards yet another secret destination. We lay on heaps of military gunge and sang the worst American song titles we could dream up: ‘Galloping hooves in the night remind me I married a Centaur’; ‘Little Dutch time bomb, tick-tock-Boom’; ‘I’ll wait for you till the end of time and then apply for an extension’. We were whistling the Warsaw Concerto when the lorry stopped. We’d arrived!
In the dark Harry and I unloaded our kit. The lorry drove away. He’d only stopped far a leak. We stood on the verge swearing. We sat on the verge swearing, which is the same as standing only lower down. We put our groundsheets down, covered up with blankets and went to sleep swearing. In the wee hours the truck returned. “You silly buggers,” said the driver, “what did you get off for?”
“Excitement,” said Harry.
An hour later, we were dumped in the yard of a requisitioned livery stable cum dog breeders’ kennels at the junction of the A295 and A22 (Hailsham-Eastbourne road). “Up in t’ loft, that’s where Clads are sleeping,” said the duty Bombardier. We climbed up and were met with the steamy fug that goes with sleeping gunners.
It was 5.30 a.m., no point in sleeping. We started to change into dry clothes; a perfect end to the whole night was nigh. I fell through a trap door. Edgington looked down from above.
“Cheer up,” he said. “Remember, man with death-watch beetle in wooden leg better off than man with tin leg in thunderstorm.” I made a certain gesture.
Our new H.Q. was Hailsham. In the town centre, an old Vicarage was commandeered as Battery Office; it was a maze of unending passages and dark brown rooms. I remember Lieutenant Walker, drunk, at two one morning, blundering through the darkened corridors shouting “Ariadne! the thread! The thread!”
Normal day. Reveille 06:30. Roll call, 07:00. Breakfast, 07:15. Parade, 08:00. Then training. Morse Code, Heliograph, Wireless, Jokes, Tea. Break at 10:30, when a N.A.A.F.I. Van arrived. Parade 11:00. More training. I was the clown of the Battery I would give a demonstration of how to do rifle drill in Braille, how to sleep standing up on guard, how to teach a battledress to beg, how to march standing still.
Roll call one morning.
“Neat?”
“Sah!”
“Edgington ?”
“Sah!”
“Milligan…MILLIGAN?…GUNNER MILLIGAN?”
“Sah!”
“Why didn’t you answer the first time?”
“I thought I’d bring a little tension into your life, Sarge.”
“Oh—well here’s a little tension for you. TEN—SHUN! To cook house for fat-i-gues—Double!!”
FIGHT AT ROBIN’S POST—IN HAILSHAM
The Battery telephone exchange was in the grounds of Robin’s Post, a private home on the A22 road between Horsefield and Polegate. Again it was an air-raid shelter but brand new, with shelves, wall beds, ventilation and plenty of electric points and lights. We were well away from