Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [107]
Bdr. Begent in a romantic mood or with heart disease.
It was a terrible night, four Gunners died and six were wounded. All suffered burns in varying degrees. The work of subduing the fire and tidying up went on until early dawn. It was terrible to see the burnt corpses. There was little Gunner Musclewhite, he’d been killed sitting up in bed. He was burnt black, and his teeth showed white through his black, fleshless head. Sgt. Jock Wilson too, Gunner White and Ferrier…
A burial party under BSM Griffin were starting to dig as dawn came up. I went on duty at the Command Post. I wondered where Edgington was and wondered if he was a victim.
“No, he’s on Exchange duties,” said Chalky White.
I had run over to him just to verify. I pulled back the black-out that covered the little cave that the Telephone Exchange was; I could see he was visibly shaken by the affair.
“Just seein’ you was still alive,” I said and rushed back to the chaos.
What had happened need never have been so bad had we all not become careless. The Gunners had dug themselves a dug-out and covered it with a camouflage net, but they had surrounded their dug-out with Charge Boxes. The first shells must have hit the charges, which blew up and ignited the camouflage net that then fell in flames on top of those trapped underneath…
1605 hrs
Lauro dive-bombed by seven enemy fighters. The all-night standing had made the piles worse. They started to bleed, it’s all I needed for a perfect night.
Yes! I have what is called the curse of the Milligans—piles! My father had them, my grandfather had them, I was born with them. I thought they came along with legs, arms and teeth. They were bloody painful, and mine were bleeding down my legs. My father hated, personally hated, his piles; he, a great romantic of all the ailments! he, good-looking tap-dancing he, had to get piles. Why piles? he would rage as he squatted on two bowls of water, dipping his end alternatively into the hot and cold. Why—why like Chopin could he not have the romantic scourge? Consumption—“Look at the sympathy he got, lucky swine!”—he could sit at his piano in a cell of the Carthusian Monastery, composing his Nocturnes, coughing gently: that was music and disease at its romantic best. But how, he asked, how could Chopin, in the sight of his beloved George Sand, sit at his piano, strike the first chords of the E Minor Nocturne, clutch his backside and say, “Oh my piles”—he wouldn’t have got very far like that! My poor father—how he suffered, it wasn’t the piles but his pride that hurt. When he had to cancel a performance at the Poona Gymkana special show for Sir Skipton Climo MC in 1925, he wrote:
“Dear Lady C, I’m afraid I have been confined to bed, an old war-wound from Mesopotamia, a Turkish sniper got me”, etc.
When I said to him, “Why don’t you have them out?” he said, “What? and let them escape! Never! when I die I’ll go straight to hell and I want those bastards to come with me and SUFFER.”
We drove in a 15-cwt back to the Wagon Lines, and waited outside Dr Bentley’s tent—came my turn.
Duck into the tent. Dr Bentley. He smiles as I enter.
“Ah Milligan—haven’t seen you for a while.”
“It’s not for the want of trying, sir.”
“You look alright.”
“You’re looking at the wrong end.”
“What is it?”
“Piles.”
“Piles! At your age.”
“Yes, sir—I’m advanced for my years.”
“Yes—they look very sore—”
“They’re bloody sore—it’s painful to walk.”
“Well, I’ve no medication for them—I’ll give you bed down forty-eight hours—attend B.”
Bed! Forty-eight hours! A fortune-teller said one day I’d be lucky!
JANUARY 19, 1944
MY DIARY:
SORE ARSE. GOOD MORNING, EVERYBODY. ALL VERY DEPRESSED ABOUT THE LOSS OF THOSE POOR BLOODY GUNNERS.
It was a sunny morning again. I could hear some birds singing in the olive trees.