Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [37]
I planned revenge. I cut my finger-nails. On his next visit I placed them in a cigarette lid.
“What are those?”
“Finger-nails sir.”
“Throw them away.”
“They are my fiancée’s sir.”
“Throw them away.”
“Very good sir.”
The next time he visited I had cut a small lock of my hair, tied a small bow on it and placed it on my bed.
“What’s that?”
“A lock of hair sir.”
“Throw it away.”
“It’s my fiancée’s sir.” etc. etc.
The last one I planned was with an artificial limb, but the officer never visited me again. He was drafted overseas, and killed during an air-raid on Tobruk; a N.A.A.F.I. Tea Urn fell on his head.
My duties were not unpleasant.
Reveille 06:00. Make tea for the Guard. Drink lots of tea.
Collect blackberries along the railway bank for Sergeants’ Mess Tea.
In pouring rain, shovel two six-foot-high piles of coke into ‘One Uniform Conical Heap’. (A Bad Day.)
Commissioned to draw a naked Varga Girl for Guard Room.(A Good Day.)
Trip to beach to collect winkles for Sergeants’ Mess Tea.
Weed Parade Ground by hand. (Bloody Awful Day.)
Commissioned to draw Varga Girl for Sergeants’ Mess. (Another Good Day.)
Oil all locks and hinges at Preston Barracks, sandpaper door of cell, prime, undercoat, and paint gunmetal black.
Drive Major Druce-Bangley to Eastbourne (his driver taken ill with an overdose of whisky) to have it off with his wife in house on seafront.
After fourteen days I was sent back to Hailsham—I arrived to find the whole Battery boarding lorries yes! “Prepare to move”—again! With my kit I jumped into a fifteen hundredweight, making it a sixteen hundredweight.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, it’s another secret destination,” said Sergeant Dawson.
Three hours later, we were back to square one. Bexhill.
“I wish they’d make their fucking minds up,” said Sergeant Dawson.
“Look Sarge, they’re moving us about to make us look a lot,” said Gunner Tome.
“We look a lot,” said Dawson, “a lot of cunts.”
“Give us a merry song, Sarge,” I said, running for cover.
After the war, in 1968, I was appearing at the Royal Theatre, Brighton. I took a trip to Preston Barracks. All changed, the Old Guard Room with my cell had gone—everything had changed except the large parade ground, that was still there; did I really weed it by hand in 1942? We must have all been bloody mad.
DECEMBER 1942-JANUARY 1943—EMBARKATION LEAVE
As the monkey-keeper at the Zoo said, when a new trussed-up gorilla arrived, “It was bound to come.” We were going overseas. Of course we should have gone yesterday. Everything had to be packed into everything else yesterday. Somewhere great wooden crates appeared yesterday. “Good God,” said Edgington yesterday, “they’re sending us by parcel post!” The crates were filled, nailed down and stencilled ‘This Way Up’ at all angles. Vehicles had to be waterproofed. Oh dearie me! This smacked of a beach landing. Everything was camouflaged black and dark green so it couldn’t be the desert. All our missing clothing was replaced. We then ran straight down to the town and sold them. One issue was a large vacuum-sealed tin of ‘Emergency Chocolate’, only to be eaten in the event of, say, being surrounded by the Enemy. That night, in bed, surrounded by the Enemy, I ate my Emergency Chocolate.
The news had been broken by the Old Man in the N.A.A.F.I. hut, the dear old N.A.A.F.I. hut. In it we wrote letters home, drank tea, played ping-pong, banged tunes out on the piano, or, when we had no money just sat there to keep warm. It was in this but that I first heard the voice of Churchill on an old Brown Bakelite Ecko Radio. On the day of the official pronouncement, we were marched in and sat down. Enter Major Chaterjack, “Eyes Front!” Chaterjack acknowledges Battery Sergeant-Major’s salute. “At ease Sergeant-Major.” At ease it is. “You can all smoke,” said Chaterjack, “I’m going to.” (Light laughter.) Smilingly, he starts to speak. “You may have been hearing rumours that we were going abroad.” (Laughter. Rumours had been non-stop.) “We are, finally, going overseas. It’s what we