Monty, his part in my victory - Spike Milligan [22]
In the theatre props room, we had found a selection of plaster arms and legs with which we swam, holding them above the waves at arms’ length.
Fifty yards from the shore was a rock shelf just below the surface, and, to the lads, I appeared to be walking on the water. “There’s only one other bloke done this,” I said and awaited a thunderbolt from heaven. Instead, Edgington swims up and prepares one of his Captain Webb plunge dives, arms above head, palms touching, he is waiting for the Wrens to look. As they do I whip his drawers down, he lets out a high female scream, and, hands over his willy, falls into the water in the foetus position — that is foetus firstus. The Wrens have had enough, they leave. We shout after them in mock rage, “You dirty little devils, we know why you joined the Navy,” says Kidgell, “one day you’ll come crawling back on your hands and knees.”
“She’ll still be taller than you, short arse,” says Harry.
Ken Carter is lying half-in, half-out of the Mediterranean, the waves lapping up his shorts. “It’s lovely,” he coos.
“From where I’m standin’, it looks bloody ‘orrible,” says Kidgell. There is a loud yell from Edgington who comes galloping from the sea. “I bin stung,” he is shouting, and points to a red mark on his arm.
“It suits you,” I said.
It must have been the only jelly fish in a thousand miles but Edgington finds it. This was not the finish, in minutes three, it stung him again, surely a world’s record. He got a stick and went thrashing at the sea in a foaming rage. “I’ll give it bloody jelly fish,” he was shouting when it stung him from behind for the third time.
We rehearsed the show in the cool of the evening, but Ken Carter was a stickler for perfection, so that it was midnight when we finished. We were all dog tired, and barked ourselves to sleep. We were billeted in a huge concrete school, in three floors, occupying what was a classroom with a running balcony overlooking the sea. At night the sea breezes afforded us a cool night’s sleep. That’s all we could afford.
Sunday, 4th July
Like all Catholics I asked God’s forgiveness for missing Mass. Douggan, devout RC confronted me. “Did you miss Mass?”
“Not really,” I said.
“You know it’s a mortal sin?”
“Yes, but I don’t feel any different. I mean if they’re going to make sins into grades, then God should have made feelings to go with them, that is, if I commit a mortal sin, I should get a pain in the leg or something, otherwise it doesn’t have any effect. Don’t worry though, I’ll do what all good lapsed Catholics do, relent on my death bed.”
“How do you know,” continued Douggan, putting his prayer book back in his big pack, “that it’s not your death bed you are laying on now?”
“I don’t know, in any case, it’s not mine, it’s Kidgell’s. He’ll be very angry if I die on it, he’s a Protestant.”
The Rev. J.W.J. Steele, 1st Army Thanksgiving Service, blessing the microphone
We spent the day on the beach, much the same as yesterday, we got very badly sun burnt. Kidgell’s nose looked like a piece of shredded wheat, children screamed when they saw him.
“Cor, that sun’s hot,” he said.
“Well you shouldn’t touch it,” I said.
Edgington had found an old French brass baritone saxophone. He became obsessed with the idea that it was a sign from heaven and that he was to become ‘a second Harry Carney’.↓
≡ Harry Carney: Duke Ellington’s Baritone Sax player.
He took the instrument down to the beach and played it waist deep in water. He seemed quite happy, and after making a series of noises on it he announced, “I’ve just played ‘I Got a gal in Kalamazoo’.”
“You sure she