Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [32]
Saturday night saw D Battery band swinging away there. The pub was really full, people passing heard the Jazz, and of course came in. The landlord was delighted. Never had such a crowd. People were standing jammed against the walls. The original trio were fully employed collecting the empties and looked much happier doing it, especially the violinist, whose name I discovered was Percy Ants! We had to play it, ‘I can’t dance, I’ve got ants in my pants’. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three shots rang out, a woman screamed. Bang. The wall mirror behind me shattered. There was a struggle going on in the entrance door. More women screamed (it might have been men but I didn’t have time to check). Bang again, and I hear a projectile whizz past me and thud into the wall behind. It was a Scottish Tank Gunner, who had been thrown out because of offensive behaviour. Outside he drew his pistol and fired through the door. He had tried to get in, but a French Canadian soldier grabbed his pistol arm, and was now holding it pointed to the ceiling. This all happened in a flash. Recalling the heroism of the ship’s orchestra on the Titanic, I went on playing. Turning round, I discovered that neither Edgington, Fildes nor Kidgell had heard of the Titanic affair and had gone. Kidgell had dived through a door that just happened to be marked ‘Ladies’. There were understandable screams from the occupants within. Edgington and Fildes had rushed to the bar and demanded free drinks. The offending soldier was finally disarmed; the Military Police arrived and took him away.
Out of the ‘Ladies’ ran several females in various states of undress, followed sheepishly by Doug Kidgell. Things settled down, and we went on playing, but this time much quieter. If anything more was coming, we wanted to hear it. I visited the pub about three years ago. The place had been tamed up and Watneyised. The old landlord was gone. No one remembered him, nor the gunfight. The rostrum and the old piano were there. I went over and touched the keyboard. It was like patting an old horse you once knew.
The Great Fight at Robin’s Post
Florrie, the landlady at the Eastbourne pub we played at in 1941, as I remember her
LARKHILL
Things had been going too smoothly to continue as they were, it really was time we had another bout of applied chaos. It came in the shape of a sudden rush to Larkhill Artillery Camp, Salisbury, hard by Stonehenge. It was January 1942, and quite the bitterest weather I could remember. We arrived after a Dawn to Sunset trip by road. Salisbury Plain was blue-white with hoar-frost. I sat in the back of a Humber Radio Car, listening to any music I could pick up from the BBC and banging my feet to keep warm. We arrived tired, but being young and tired means you could go on all night! Ha! Having parked the vehicles, we were dismissed. The signallers were shown to a long wooded but on brick piers. We dumped our kit on the beds, with the usual fight for the lower bunk, then made for the O.R.’s mess and began queuing. It must have been the season for schemes, as the whole place was swarming with gunners. We were given pale sausages, not long for this world, and potatoes so watery we drank them. The camp had masses of hot showers and we spent a pleasant hour under them, singing and enjoying the luxury of hot water. There were the usual comments about the size of one’s ‘wedding tackle’: ‘Cor, wot a beauty’, or ‘he’s bloody well hung’, or ‘Christ, his poor wife’, etc. After a quick tea and wad in the N.A.A.F.I. we went to the large cinema Nissen hut. It was The Glen Miller Orchestra in ‘Sun Valley Serenade’, and it was a feast of great Big band sound plus at least ten good songs. Sitting in the N.A.A.F.I. later, we tried to recall them; it was this way that we learnt most of the tunes for the band’s repertoire. Seated at the piano, Harry tried to play some of the tunes from the film.
“Play Warsaw Concerto,” said a drunk Scottish voice.
At dawn the next day the Battery set off on the great, ice-cold, frost-hardened