Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [108]
“Sorry, Milligan, you’ll have to go on Command Post, we’re stuck for signallers, that cunt Jenkins took enough of them with him to start a regiment.”
“But I’m bed down, Sarge.”
“What with?”
“Piles.”
“Piles? That all? I’m not asking you to use that end, just answer the phone and work the wireless, that won’t affect ‘em.”
I couldn’t say no, we really were short of men. So, with my backside hanging out, I sit on it in the Command Post. Situation reports are coming in, the battle up front is raging; I can’t understand why the guns are so quiet. It must be close fighting. Deans is on duty and so is Lt. Wright.
“They’ve forgotten about us,” he says, stands up, stretches himself and sits down, a masterful exercise in control. Deans scrapes some chestnuts from the fire and hands them around from his tin hat. “Farm Fresh,” he said. “Laid this morning.”
The phone goes. “Command Post…it’s for you, sir.” I hand the phone to Mr Wright.
“Wright here…yes…yesssss.” He hangs up. “That was Regimental OP…they were checking that the line was through.”
“Of course, I couldn’t have told them that, sir.”
Wright grins, he’s one of the lads. “Well, Milligan, that’s one of the perks of being an officer.”
“One day I’ll be an officer, sir,” I said in shining tones, “and I’ll be able to pick up the telephone and say, “Yes, I can hear you.” That will be a wonderful day.”
The phone buzzes, I snatch it up and shout, “I’m not an officer but I can hear you and that means that the line is through!”
It turns out to be some poor lost bloody signaller from another field regiment, he’s been following the wrong line.
“Whose line are you then?” he says.
I can’t tell him, that’s security.
“Oh fuck,” he says, and then I’m sure he’s one of us, but I give him a quick security test. “Who says ‘This is Funf speaking’?”
There’s a giggle on the line. “That’s ITMA.”
“This is 56 Heavy Regiment so we’re no use to you, mate.”
“Ta,” he says and is gone.
Lt. Wright is looking at me. “What was that ITMA stuff all about?”
“I was checking a signaller’s bona fides, sir.”
“Were they in order?”
“Yes, sir, he knew exactly what the answering code-word was for ITMA.”
“And what was it?”
“Bloody awful, sir.”
The phone rings again. “19 Battery Command Post.” It’s the RHQ OP. “Take Post.” I rattle down the Tannoys, “Right Ranging.” Soon we are all immersed in a two-hour Cannonade; we have no time other than to snatch a drag at a fag.
“Christ, someone’s copping it,” was Lt. Wright’s remark, based on the fact that the target remained static and we just rained gunfire in it. “It’s a crossroads with ammo lorries trying to get through,” he informs us later.
The OP tell him that several trucks have been blown up and they are trying to detour over adjacent fields, where the 25-pounders plaster them. It ends with most of their trucks blown up and they pack it in, but it took a lot to stop the bastards. They were a tough lot OK. At mid-day I am relieved by Sgt. King himself.
“Off you go, Milligan, get lunch and be back at—” he looks at his watch “—two o’clock.”
“Right.”
“‘Ow’s yer backside?”
“Out of bounds.”
I have lunch, then lay on my bed in total discomfort and very depressed. I think I’d better have the operation, yes, I’ll see the Doc in the morning and have the damn things out. Guns are going all around me; in between, birds try and sing, what do they think of all this lunacy? I have a stab at reading a book by another loony, Lord Byron; it’s appropriate, Childe Harold, and it’s being read by Child Milligan, he goes on about Italy and Rome:
Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste
More rich than other climes’ fertility.
Have I got news for him! No I couldn’t stomach Byron today, so I read what must be the most up-to-date newspaper in Italy—the Daily Express, January 7, 1944. It was flown here on an RAF with a contingent of officers, one of whom met Lt. Mostyn at base depot, and in turn it had ended up in the Command Post.