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By Root 99 0

Signaller Devine phoned and gleefully reported, “line still broken, Sarge”. The fog was very dense, as were Signallers Devine and White, who were now groping their way through Sussex in Braille. C.O.’s patience being exhausted, a runner was sent to the gun position. Off went Gunner Balfour, the Battery champion athletes foot. Another hour. He was lost. In despair Sergeant Dawson bicycled to the police station, telephoned the Gun Position and told them “Fire the Bloody Thing!” A distant ‘BOOM’. At the O.P. we heard the whistle as the rare projectile passed overhead into the Channel, a pause, a splash, then silence…it was a dud. How could the Third Reich stand up to this punishment! Next day at low tide we were sent out to look for traces of the lost projectile; we didn’t, but it was a nice day for that sort of thing.

Our very own 9 2 gun howitzer

Left to right: Gunners Edgington, Milligan, White and Devine, at low tide on the beach at Galley Hill O.P., Bexhill, the day after the famous dud shell was fired, looking for traces of the lost projectile

Gunner Milligan at the mighty Spandau

LIFE IN BEXHILL 1940-41

In Bexhill life carried on. We went on route marches which became pleasant country walks. A favourite marching song was ‘Come inside’—so:

Verse:

Outside a lunatic asylum one day

A Gunner was picking up stones;

Up popped a lunatic and said to him,

Good Morning Gunner Jones,

How much a week do you get for doing that?

Fifteen bob, I cried.

He looked at me

With a look of glee

And this is what he cried,

Chorus:

Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside,

I thought you had a bit more sense,

Working for the Army, take my tip

Act a bit balmy and become a lunatic;

You get your four meals regular

and two new suits beside,

Wot? fifteen bob a week,

A wife and kids to keep, Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside.

No matter what season, the Sussex countryside was always a pleasure. But the summer of 1941 was a delight. The late lambs on springheel legs danced their happiness. Hot, immobile cows chewed sweet cud under the leaf-choked limbs of June oaks that were young 500 years past. The musk of bramble and blackberry hedges, with purple-black fruit offering themselves to passing hands, poppies red, red, red, tracking the sun with open-throated petals, birds bickering aloft, bibulous to the sun. White fleecy clouds passing high, changing shapes as if uncertain of what they were. To break for a smoke, to lie in that beckoning grass and watch cabbage white butterflies dancing on the wind. Everywhere was saying bethankit. It was hop picking time. In 1941 the pickers were real cockneys who, to the consternation of the A.R.P. Wardens, lit bonfires at night and sang roistering songs under the stars. “Right, fags out, fall in!” of course, I almost forgot, the war! but people were saying it would all be over by Christmas. Good! that was in twelve weeks’ time! I started to read the ‘Situations Vacant’ in the Daily Telegraph, and prematurely advertised, “Gunner 954024, retired house-trained war hero, unexpectedly vacant. Can pull a piece of string and shout bang with confidence.”

Part III

1940 HOW WE MADE MUSIC DESPITE

I took my trumpet to war. I thought I’d earn spare cash by playing Fall In, Charge, Retreat, Lights Out, etc. I put a printed card on the Battery Notice Board, showing my scale of charges:

Fall In 1/6

Fall out 1/-

Charge 1/9

Halt £648

Retreat (Pianissimo) 4/-

Retreat (Fortissimo) 10/-

Lights Out 3/-

Lights Out played in private 4/-

While waiting for these commissions I’d lie on my palliasse and play tunes like, ‘Body and Soul’, ‘Can’t Get Started’, ‘Stardust’. It was with mixed feeling that I played something as exotic as ‘You go to my Head’ watching some hairy gunner cutting his toe-nails. Of course I soon contacted the Jazz addicts. I was introduced to six-foot-two dreamy-eyed Gunner Harry Edgington. A Londoner, he was an extraordinary man, with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. Harry played the piano. Self taught.