Monty, his part in my victory - Spike Milligan [1]
Occasionally a lorry door would open as an occupant pissed out of the side to cries of “You’re spoiling the carpet.”
A creature shining like glycerine approached. his boots great dustbin lids of mud.
“Let me in,” it groaned, “I can’t swim.”
Edgington squeezed in.
“Anything on the wireless?” he said.
“No, the batteries are flat.”
“I thought they were square,” he said.
“I’ll turn on the windscreen wipers, it’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”
He watched the blades sweep the rain from the glass.
“Ooooohhh,” he groaned in ecstasy. “What other Army can give you perversions like this.”
The rain is now frightening, the ground is rapidly flooding. “We better start building a fuckin’ Ark.” said Sgt Ryan.
Lunch came, lunch went, tea came, tea went, dinner came, dinner went. That was May the 8th 1943. Anybody want to buy it? It’s going cheap.
NAZI NEWS FLASH
The scene:
Mrs Eichmann’s boarding house. Bolivia.
HIMMLER:
Ach Ein bugger! Ve should never have lost Tunis! If der Führer had only eaten his tin of P.A.D.
GOERING:
P.A.D.?
HIMMLER:
P.A.D. Prolonged Active Dog. If mine Führer had eaten Prolonged Active Dog, today he would be 159 vid a beautiful coat.
A captured German pilot crapping into the cockpit of his plane in displeasure with the Geneva Convention
May 9th 1943
Dawn. Rain stopped. I prod Edgington.
“Awake! for morning in a bowl of light, has cast the stone that puts the stars to flight.”
“Bollocks.”
“No it was Fitzgerald.”
“Fitzgerald’s bollocks then.”
The sun rose, angering the morning sky, and Edgington was none too pleased either.
“Wassertime?” he said, as he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth with a spoon.
“It’s hours 0600 darling.”
“It’s hours too bloody early ‘darling’.”
He opened his eyes with a sound like the tearing apart of fly papers.
Driver Fildes rapped on the window. “I’m driving to Tunis.”
Edgington sits up. “Can I come too?”
“It’s about time you came to,” I chuckled. The boot missed me, landed in the mud and sank slowly out of sight.
“It’s one legged marching from now on,” I tell him.
We set off across the Goubelat Plain to Tunis, following the wake of the victorious 6th and 7th Armoured. We passed smouldering tanks, dead soldiers in grotesque ballet positions, Arab families emerging from hiding, baffled and frightened, and the children, always the children, more baffled and frightened than the rest.
In the Tunis streets the milling throng are thronging the mills. At a café, two German officers drink coffee. Lt Walker asked what they were doing. In perfect broken English they replied, “Ve are vaiting to be took prisoners old poy.”
We motored slowly through the crowded streets, being kissed several times by pretty girls and once, by a pretty boy.
“No one’s kissed me,” complained Gunner Holt, his face like a dog’s bum with a hat on.
“Never mind — ‘ere comes one now, I’ll stamp on her glasses!”
A fat lady with revolving bosoms shouts “Vive les Americains.”
“She thinks we’re Americans,” says Holt.
“We’ll slip one up her, then blame them,” says Devine.
A group of ‘Ities’ insist they be taken prisoner or they’ll surrender.
“Sorry --—” I explain, “We British Army prisoners.”
Some of the beautiful ladies of Tunis greeting our victorious entry
The day passed with the drinking of wine and the ogling of women. We were well oiled when two Gunners, The Pills (twins), cadged a lift. “Either I’m pissed — or he is,” said Devine referring to the twins. The Pills told us the Batter had “rejoined Regiment on t’other side T’Oued Melah’,” by sheer luck we found it in t’dark.
Our wireless truck ‘Fred’
“Have you caught it yet?” greeted Bombardier Dean. He held up a half empty bottle. I recognized the gesture at once.
I must have got pretty stoned. When I awoke next morning I was fully dressed, face downwards, on the roof of a lorry, with a severe attack of face.
“On yer bloody feet,” said a fiend sergeant. We were going into action again!! “He’s bottled up in Cap Bon, so no Tunis tata’s