Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [112]
I said, “What wound?”
I had been hit on the side of my right leg.
“Why did you come back?” He is shouting at me and threatening me, I can’t remember what I am saying. He’s saying, “You could find your way back but you couldn’t find your way to the OP,” next I’m sitting in an ambulance and shaking, an orderly puts a blanket round my shoulders, I’m crying again, why why why? Next I’m in a forward dressing station, an orderly gives me a bowl of hot very sweet tea, “Swallow these,” he says, two small white pills. I can’t hold the bowl for shaking, he takes it from me and helps me drink it. All around are wounded, he has rolled up my trouser leg. He’s putting a sticking plaster on the wound, he’s telling me it’s only a small one. I don’t really care if it’s big or small, why am I crying? Why can’t I stop? I’m getting lots of sympathy, what I want is an explanation. I’m feeling drowsy, and I must have started to sway because next I’m on a stretcher. I feel lovely, what were in those tablets…that’s the stuff for me, who wants food? I don’t know how long I’m there, I wake up. I’m still on the stretcher, I’m not drowsy, but I start to shiver. I sit up. They put a label on me. They get me to my feet and help me to an ambulance. I can see really badly wounded men, their bandages soaked through with blood, plasma is being dripped into them.
When we get to one of the Red Cross trucks, an Italian woman, all in black, young, beautiful, is holding a dead baby and weeping; someone says the child has been killed by a shell splinter. The relatives are standing by looking out of place in their ragged peasants’ clothing amid all the uniforms. An older woman gives her a plate of home-made biscuits, of no possible use, just a desperate gesture of love. She sits in front with the driver. I’m in the back. We all sit on seats facing each other, not one face can I remember. Suddenly we are passing through our artillery lines as the guns fire. I jump at each explosion, then, a gesture I will never forget, a young soldier next to me with his right arm in a bloody sling put his arm around my shoulder and tried to comfort me. “There, there, you’ll be alright mate.”
Wounded coming across the bridge, January 20, 1944. I was to come across the same bridge the next day.
We arrived at a camp. I was put into a tent on a bunk bed. An orderly gave me four tablets and more hot tea; in a few seconds they put me out like a light. I had finished being a useful soldier. I’ve had it. Here is ‘Dipper’ Dye’s version, though it differs a lot from mine. However!
All this time Jerry was belting away at us, so even getting the rope across the river was no mean feat by whoever had managed it. Once on the other bank of the river there was still a good march to the base of ‘Damiano’, and Bombardier Milligan and I were given the job of carrying a large coil of telephone wire attached to a drum which took two men to carry by holding a pole through the centre of the drum. What with packs on our back, carrying tommy gun and the wire and the state of the terrain, I was beginning to wish I was back at base with my gun-towing Scammell and Doug Kidgell, who was my co-driver. Spike and I trudged on until we were nearing ‘Damiano’, and at the foot of the hill we came to a gully. Suddenly mortar shelling became really violent and I dived for cover in a cranny at the side of the hill. Spike fell to the ground and seemed very badly shellshocked and affected, especially in his backside area.*
≡ Piles!
I helped him to his feet and carried him to the best of my ability to the First Aid Post, where I left him.