Adolf Hitler_ my part in his downfall - Spike Milligan [9]
In the months to come we enlivened many a lonely military camp. We saw life. In Upper Dicker, we played for a dance-cum-orgy. Couples were disappearing into the tall grass having it off and then coming back to the dance. God knows how many Coitus Interrupti the Hesitation Waltz caused, but we heard screams from behind the trees.
Music has strange effects on drunks: one lunatic ripped open his battle-dress, pointed to a scar on his chest, and shouted “Dunkirk! you bloody coward.” He had a face made from red plasticine by a child of three, that or his parachute didn’t open. “Do you hear me, you bloody coward. Dunkirk…” he kept saying. I’ve no idea what he meant. I confused him by giving him the ladies’ spot prize. A fight broke out with the Canadians. They were all massive.
“How do you get such huge men?” I asked one.
“We go in the forest, shake the trees and they fall out,” he said.
A worried officer rushed up.
“Can you play ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’?”
“No sir, after an hour I get tired.”
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
In despair we played The King, shouted ‘Everyone back to their own beds’, and departed.
On Bexhill’s sea front stood the De La Warr Pavillion, named after Lord De La Warr Pavillion, a fine modern building with absolutely no architectural merit at all. It was opened just in time to be bombed. The plane that dropped it was said to have been chartered by the Royal Institute of Architects, piloted by Sir Hugh Casson with John Betjeman as bomb aimer. The invasion of England, though always imminent, did not stop the reopening of the Pavillion for dances by the local Rotary Club. The band could now play on a genuine stage, and ‘N.A.A.F.I. Piano-ridden’ Edgington could perform on a concert Steinway Grand. Our M.C. was Mr Courtney who was ‘well known in Bexhill’. He owned an antique shop, and when short of stock put his suits in the window. Occasionally he sang ‘Might Lak a Rose’ in a quavering light baritone (or mighty like a baritone, in a quivering rose), which suggested a maladjusted truss. He told us he thought Charlie Kunz was the greatest Jazz pianist in the world, in his own words, “He’s a sort of white Duke Ellington.”
During the months leading into the winter of 1940 the D Battery were the centre of night life in war-ridden, sinful Bexhill-on-Sea. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was taking the first steps into Show Business.
Harry Edgington in brown study
Driver Doug Kidgell, as the Khaki Pimpernel
Driver Kidgell playing the drums as though they weren’t stolen
The memorable first wartime dance in Bexhill Old Town Church Hall, and the band’s first engagement
RELIGION
Men in uniform can’t really be considered religious, unless it be a Christian profundity that makes a Gunner say Jesus Christ! when he drops a shell on his foot. Even the Battery Chaplain was suspect. One night I found him face downwards near the Officers Billets, singing ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’; granted, it may have been a new way of holding services during heavy shelling. The Catholics had occasional visits from Father Holything who seemed horrified at the thought of any soldier having sexual intercourse.
“Be careful of strong drink my sons,” he warned. “Bear in mind it excites the sexual appetites, therefore if you see a comrade drunk, bring him home and bathe the parts in cold water.” It was great to know how to be a Christian, all you needed was an erection and a bucket of cold water. He warned, “Avoid loose women.” I never told him straight the women I knew were so loose they were falling to bits. Anyway, we had nothing to do with loose women, we were all sleeping with highly respectable officers’ wives, whose husbands were at the war. In our rough soldier way we were trying to comfort them. One man was comforting so many he was excused clothes.
FOOD
Oh those military meals! Breakfast could be recognized by shape, sausage, yes, but lunch! The white watery mound could be spuds, but what was the heap of steaming