Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [1]
“Hello B4, are you receiving me?”
PAUSE
“Hello B4 answering.”
PAUSE
“Hello B4, why didn’t you answer B4?”
“Because we didn’t hear you before.” In the early light the sea is blue-black like ink. Kidgell is carefully folding his blankets into a mess, “I haven’t slept that well for years.”
“How do you know?” I said. “You were asleep.” He chuckled, “Well it feels like I slept well.”
“Where did you feel it, in the legs? the elbows? teeth?” I was determined to pursue the matter to its illogical conclusion; I mean if sane people are going around saying ‘I slept well last night’, what would lunatics say? ‘I stayed awake all night so I could see if I slept well’? I mean—we are interrupted by the shattering roar of aircraft!! “Spitfires!” someone said, and we all got up again.
“Thank God they weren’t German,” says Kidgell. “Why thank him,” I said. “He doesn’t run the German air force, thank Hitler.”
“Alright, clever Dick.” He giggled. “This is going to sound silly—thank Hitler they weren’t Germans.”
The helmsman’s face showed white through the wheel house.
I produce a packet of Woodbines. I offer one to Kidgell. I have to…he’s got the matches. My watch says 12.20; that means it’s about seven o’clock. We stow our gear into a lorry full of sleeping Gunners with variable pitch snoring; three of them are snoring the chord of C Minor. We decide to walk ‘forrard’. The Boxer makes a frothy swathe as her flat prow divides the waters. The sky is turning into post-dawn colours—scarlet, pink, lemon. It looked like the ending of a treacly MGM film where John Wayne joins his Ghost Riders in the sky. (Personally I can’t wait for him to.) It’s chilly; we wear overcoats with the collars up. Kidgell looks pensively out towards Italy.
“I was wondering about the landing.”
“Don’t worry about the landing, I’ll hoover it in the morning.”
He ignored me, but then everybody did. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking? This could mean promotion,” I said.
“I was thinking, supposing they land us in six foot of water.”
“Then everyone five foot eleven and three quarters will drown.”
“That’s the end of me, then.”
“I thought you were a champion swimmer!”
“You can’t swim in Army Boots.”
“You’re right, there is not enough room.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about ten words to the minute.”
A merry matelot approaches with a Huge Brown Kettle. “You lads like some cocoa?”
We galloped at the speed of light to our big packs and returned to meet the merry matelot as he descended from the Bridge. He pours out the thick brown remaining sludge. The gulls in our wake scream as they dive-bomb the morning garbage. We sip the cocoa, holding the mug with both hands to warm them. A change from holding the mug to warm the Naafi tea. Another cigarette, what a lunatic habit! “Here we are,” I said. “We go to these bastards who make this crap and we say ‘We will give you money for twenty of those fags’, we smoke them, we make the product disappear I Ha! Supposing you bought a piano on the same basis? Suddenly, in the middle of a concert it disappears, you have to belt out and buy another one to finish the concerto. It’s lunacy.”
In the deck-house, a red-faced officer scans the horizon ahead. “I wonder exactly where we are,” says Kidgell.
“I think we’re on the ancient sea of Tyrrhenum Sive Inferum.” That finishes him.
“When we reach Sicily we will hug the coast to afford us air cover and the way things are, I’d say we could just afford it.”
We are travelling one of the most ancient trade routes in history, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Mamelukes, Turks and Mrs Doris Hare. “Fancy us being part of history,” I said. “I don’t fancy it,” said Kidgell.
The Tannoys crackle. “Attention,