Monty, his part in my victory - Spike Milligan [6]
Hitlergram No. 6140823
HITLER:
Right! I challenge you! — I will take three months at zer Eagles Nest; Berchtesgarten!
MILLIGAN:
A week at Mrs Terrible’s Boarding house, Herne Bay.
HITLER:
A month at The Schlöss Heidelberg on zer blue Rhine.
MILLIGAN:
Ten days at Butlins, Clacton.
HITLER:
Three months in zer Grosse Schoener Schoenbrunn Palace, Vienna!
MILLIGAN:
nights at the YMCA, Croydon. HITLER:
Six months…you hear Six Months in Gracie Fields Villa, Capri! ! ! !
MILLIGAN:
Checkmate!
HITLER:
I don’t accept cheques mate, you vill haff to pay cash.
16 May 1943
My Diary:
Off to Tunis POW camp to scrounge.
We entered the camp. Revenge is sweet, but not fattening. Lt Mostyn’s Jewish soul was bent on revenge, he relieved Germans of their watches.
“I’ll see that these ‘gifts’ are rewarded,” he said. “This will get you extra rations,” and handed them a chit declaring, “This is an anti-Semitic bastard, knock the shit out of him.”
Edgington discovered a Field Kitchen and a Portable Brothel. “Terrible!” said White, “the kitchen’s full, the brothel’s empty.” Rummaging, they found Knackebrot,↓ ersatz Kaffee and a selection of German cigarettes.
≡ Jerry Crispbread.
Hitlergram No. 96133a
HITLER:
Mein Gott, zey are smoking our Fags! Zat is terrible.
EVA BRAUN:
I know. I’ve smoked zem.
HITLER:
To get our Fags to Tunisia ve had to go through Allied Air Raids on zer Factories! bombs on zer Railways! zer boats to Afrika are torpedoed and zer fags end up being smoked by zat Huddersfield Schit Gunner White!
EVA BRAUN:
It’s not right and it’s not fair.
HITLER:
Vot isn’t.
EVA BRAUN:
Zer left leg of a Joe Louis.
HITLER:
I don’t vish to know zat, kindly leave zer bunker.
Oudna Idyll
2.20 p.m.
I lay in my tent, the heat was terrific, flies and minute dive bombing insects were at large, on the outside of the mosquito net they hung, waiting…occasionally displaced them with jets of cigarette smoke. Why should suffer alone. In the next tent was Gunner White.
“Wot you doin’?” I said.
“I’m laying on me back smokin’ a Woodbine with me left hand, and scratching me balls with me right.”
“Say hello while you’re there.”
“I was thinkin’,” he said, “at this time back in England on a Saturday afternoon, you know what I’d be doing?”
“No.”
“I’d be in my bedroom, layin’ on me bed, smoking a Woodbine with me left hand and scratching me balls etc. Wot’d you be doin’?”
“I’d mow the grass in the garden and my father would sit in a deck chair and encourage me with cries of ‘It does you good lad’, and I’d say to him ‘why don’t you do it then?’ and he’d say ‘Because it doesn’t do me good, I’ve tried it’.”
“This is a waste of bloody time, my life is going past, time is on the march and here I am on me back in bloody Oudna doing sweet FA. This isn’t living! This is…this is…” he fumbled for a word, couldn’t find it and settled for ‘fucking terrible…what I need in life is variation, something different
“Right, try smoking with your right hand and scratching your balls with your left.”
In his tent Edgington starts a tune. “Lada da da de de’ which emerged as ‘Red Sails in the Sunset, Way out on the Sea…” I joined in harmony, this was taken up by Gunner White and in the next tent to Edge, Gunner Tume. One by one the entire tented camp joined in. I got up. I was the only person visible; from the sea of tents the great chorus ‘Oh carry my loved-ed oneeee, home safeleeeee to meeee’ soared over the sunbaked plain. No one would have believed it. I didn’t.
British sergeant selling his lorry to an Arab
Oudna: More Letters from Home
A parcel from home! 2/3rds of which are Holy Medals of St Patrick and St Therese. I only need St Andrew and I’ve got the set, if I had worn every