Monty, his part in my victory - Spike Milligan [4]
On this day I met a girl in the street. “Good morning, would you like me to take you home to have some food?” she aid. Food? She took me home to 16 Rue de Lyon, and I met her (wait for it) family! “Vive l’Armèe Premier” they said, which is no substitute for sex. The girl was Daisy Setbon, 17, Jewish-French, about 5 foot 5, olive skinned, with raven shoulder-length hair. She showed us the sights of Tunis; mostly consisting of drunken British soldiers kipping in the gutter.
I wrote to her for 10 years after the war, when suddenly her letters stopped. All inquiries brought no response. Of course! Plunger Bailey! So! the waiting game had paid off.
That evening we were given a dinner at the Setbon’s home as Alf Fildes notes in his diary, “Had swell meal of spaghetti and beans topped with best red Italian wine.”
Our truck is missing! We follow a trail of wine and dog ends and find it in the middle of a square; standing in the driver’s seat is another square, Gnr White. A truck full of Tunisians were taking it in turns to wear his hat.
STALIN:
Comrade what kind of a warski is this? Here we are dying by the million and your lot are laying about pissedski in Tunis.
CHURCHILL:
You can’t stop ‘emski. If I report them, their mothers write to their MP’s and they report me to the Kingski.
14 The Tunis Love-in
Tunis 13 May
The screwing had started. Young Lochinvars, prematurely aged with all night poking, were coming in at first light, paler than the dawn, collapsing on their beds and groaning ‘Lovely’. The Great ‘Plunger’ Bailey decided that degrees of prowess should be recorded. A black-board was hung on his lorry.
BATTERY SHAGS AS PER MAY 1943 women
involved
nbr of
times
REMARKS
Gunner James 1 6 Tres Bon
Lance/Bdr King 1 1 Brewers Droop
Gunner Forrest 1 1 Death through natural causes
Gunner ‘Plunger’ Bailey 4 20 Resting
Edgington’s face darkens. “How can a man face the woman he loves after all this shagging?”
Said White, “He could say, ‘Darlin’ I’ve been keeping in training for you, it’s been hard work but worth the sacrifice, for, when it came to my darlin’s turn, I’d be fit and ready for her.’”
Edgington retaliated, “You’re throwing your love lives away,” he said, lying back in his tent, his socks adrift on his feet, and bent over at the ends. “Oh no, when I go to the Marriage Bed, I go pure as the driven snow,” which was some statement coming from a long white creature with fore-arms and knees burnt brown, wearing a vest which just covered his willy, 2 sticking plasters on his inoculated arm, a hair cut that made his head look like a coconut and all of this covered with a fine layer of Tunisian dust. Picture the scene. Suddenly, at the mouth of the tent appears Betty Grable, she sees Edgington. “Darling,” she says, slowly. He stands up, the pimples on his bare bum showing purple in the half light, he takes her in his arms, and slowly they start ‘ to dance out of the tent across the dusty plain in a cloud of dust, his socks slipping off, and the tail of his vest flapping in the breeze.
A British soldier with an incredible weapon
Letters from Home
13 May 1943
Back home, brother Desmond, filled with post-public patriotism, joined the Air Cadets, he and a gaggle of pimply Freds were given instruction in a cardboard cockpit, “one of us sits inside, another holds a model of a Stuka, and we shoot it down.” When my brother’s turn came, he would give forth with the entire sound effects of the film ‘Hell’s Angels’, which would end up with him crashing to the ground dying. Then, raising himself on one elbow, he would shout ‘Gott Strafe England’. It was all very praiseworthy and a complete waste of bloody time.
My mother took up leather work at night classes. From then