Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [104]
“Hello, hello, what’s this, then?” Through the sandbagged portals steps Gunner Edgington.
“I heard the tune of a fairy piper and I couldn’t stop a-dancing.” Then in a ridiculous voice, “I’ve danced allll the way here, me dearrrrr.”
We yarned nostalgically about our ‘gigs’, all that happy playing together that had now all stopped.
“It’s not the same without people dancing,” he said. “Dance music needs dancers.”
I brew up some tea, and he talks about tunes he’s got going in his head. He had the great gift of writing a tune that you almost immediately remembered, and he still does; it’s a great waste of great tunes that he doesn’t try to sell them. I’m privileged to be the only one who hears them, it’s like having your own pet composer. He whistles a new theme,
Lauro gun positions, January 1944. Two officers (Lts. Pride and Walker) are on their knees through lack of food. Also on his knees is Vic Nash, who is the same height standing. Standing on the left is Ron Sherwood, and pointing is Jamjar Griffin.
“It’s called ‘The Angels Cried’. I had it in mind when you first told me that you loved Lily Dunford and she’d gone off with some other twit, and I think I’ve just about got the tune right.”
I’m honoured! a song about my love affair. Wow!
Bombardier Marsden is up with the Naafi and Free Issue, he’s on the fiddle again and is going to raffle a bottle of whisky.
“Ten lire a ticket.” We all buy one. “Ten lire for a bottle of whisky, that’s cheap,” he says.
“It’s ten lire more than you paid for it, you thievin’ bugger,” says forthright Gunner Devine.
“Watch it, watch it,” threatens Bdr. Marsden.
“Watch it,” laughs Devine. “Watch it.” Whatever that meant.
Marsden has that sharp look, anything that’s going, he’ll have. His type always seem to get into the Q stores or something to do with the rations, and carry a Housey-housey kit or a Crown and Anchor board up their shirt. He is more than keen on knowing if there’s been any casualties; if there are, that means all their bloody rations go into his pocket. We carry our rations back to the dug-out, and start stuffing ourselves. It was almost a psychological need, a substitute for happiness.
“I suck mine until there’s only the raisins and nuts left in me mouth then I manipulate them into a ball and chew them.” This was Edgington revealing his method of chocolate mastication. Were there no secrets left? He groans at the call of his name.
“Bloody Exchange duty, when will it all bloody end, when, when?” With hands raised in heavenly appeal he leaves.
I forage among the olive trees and gathered wood for the fire. Wrote home to Betty with a thousand improper suggestions. The sun is waning, I light the oil lamps in the dug-out, and I thumb through a book of British poetry, some of Wilfred Owen’s poems—they are woefully sad, full of anguish…
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1944
I woke up with a feeling of foreboding, had it all day. I remember on duty in the Command Post. In the darkness men, machines and guns are moving, moving, moving, an occasional mule brays out a protest; this luxury is not afforded the men, it’s uncanny how we hear no utterance from them. It’s as though they are struck dumb. To add to the depressing atmosphere a lone piper wails in the rain-filled dark ‘The Skye Boat Song’.
“It’s the London Scottish, they’re buying their dead,” said Bdr. Fuller, who had come in to replace the batteries in the telephone. “Poor bastards, buryin’ ‘em in the bloody rain, their graves are ‘alf full of bloody water.”
The air above the gun position is an overlay of Jerry shells. “They’re after something behind us.”
We hear the shells exploding, and I wonder if they’re on target. Grapevine says no. 0350 hrs, more fire orders, no one sleeps tonight. 0500 hrs. The rain has stopped. Through the cave mouth I see the trees growing in the morning light; among them I see the muzzle bed. In comes Tume.
“Oh, here we bloody go again,” he puts his mug of tea down, no time to drink, more fire orders. I leave the cave; outside it’s guns guns guns! There’s a frost. I