• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 80 0

“Molly,” he shouted and disappeared again. The news from Moscow was good. Major Chaterjack, M.C., D.S.O. had recovered enough to come on again and was rendered unconscious for the second time. He was immediately trodden underfoot. His batman grabbed his ankles and pulled him from the carnage, a seraphic smile on his face. There seemed no sign of the fight abating, so we played ‘God save the King’, and packed our gear. There was a lot of booze left in the kitchen. We drank it. Legend has it I slid to the floor, first calling for my mother or a priest. To make matters worse, the band truck wouldn’t start, so Edgington and Fildes dragged me along between them, with Kidgell walking behind making remarks. The billet was a mile and a half away, but after a while the Gunners Edgington and Fildes dropped Gunner Milligan in a ditch and said, “Sod it.” They sat a while smoking and Driver Kidgell said, “I’ll go and ‘phone for a truck.” An hour later the water waggon arrived. It was two in the morning and I was starting to surface enough to notice that all the dragging had removed the soles from my boots. There was only enough room for three in the cabin, so Edgington and I sat astride the water tank on the back and drove through the black silent streets of Hailsham shouting ‘Night Soil’. Thank God there wasn’t any.

Hailsham was this sort of place. If you look at it on the map, it’s not marked. We made friends with a young Jazz drummer named Dixie Dean. His father owned a radio shop in Hailsham High Street.↓

≡ He’s still there.

Sunday evenings he’d invite the band to his room (over the shop), and we’d sit listening to records. I brought my records from home, and the Sunday night record session was something we looked forward to with great pleasure. Dixie’s mother would come in at intervals with tea and cakes. When the regiment went overseas, I left my records with Dixie. “I’ll collect them after the war” was my parting line. I did, but alas, the house had been hit in a raid, and among the losses was my record collection, all save one, which I still have Jimmy Luncefords Bugs Parade. I daren’t play it much; it creates such vivid memories. I have to go out for a walk; even then it’s about three hours before I can settle down again.

During our stay at Hailsham a Captain John Counsell was posted to us. In those days I knew nothing about the theatre at all, so it was not until after the war I realised his connection with the Theatre Royal, Windsor. For the record I quote from his book, Counsell’s Opinion:

Thus, I found myself promoted to Captain it is true, but as second in command of D Battery, stationed at Bexhill and later at Hailsham.

I was with it five months, during which time we had three different Battery Commanders, between the first and second of which I had several weeks in temporary command. I greatly enjoyed this short burst of authority, when I could run things more or less my own way. I tried out one idea which seemed to me to be valuable—a public meeting of all ranks which followed the Saturday morning inspection. At it, anyone could make criticisms or suggestions to improve our standards of military proficiency or domestic arrangements. In deliberate contrast to the relaxed atmosphere of the public meetings, the inspection that preceded it was tough, rigorous and exacting. There was only one point in my tour where I used to detect a whiff of indiscipline. My exit from the O.P. was invariably followed by a roar of laughter. Someone had obviously cracked a quip at my expense, and I had no doubt who it was. To me he was known as ‘Signaller Milligan’—to his mates simply ‘Spike’. Years afterwards when my daughters submitted their autograph books to the Goons, one page was inscribed: ‘To my old Captain’s daughter—Spike Milligan’.

The only ‘happening’ in Hailsham was the Saturday dance in the Corn Exchange. Somehow we picked up a clarinet player, Sergeant Amstell. He was from the Heavy Coastal Artillery. This was a huge twelve-inch cannon mounted on a railway bogey with eight wheels and pulled by an engine. It was shunted