Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [115]
“Do you know where I’m going?” I asked Wright.
“Yes, it’s the 865 FDS.”
FEBRUARY 10, 1944
MY DIARY:
LANDED UP IN NO. 2 GENERAL HOSPITAL, CASERTA.
This was a real hospital, or rather they had made it so. The weather was sunny, and I was shown into a long ward with lots of windows to let in the light and air. It had a polished stone floor, the walls and ceilings painted white. Beds along the walls. Down the centre were trestle tables with books, and a few pots of flowers. Very pleasant. I was soon in bed, dressed in blue service pyjamas. This was a Psychiatric Ward with about fifty patients in. About two-thirds were under drugs, and slept most of the day. The remainder were very silent and morose. No one spoke to anyone.
All day and every day I just sat on the bed and read. I wondered if I did anything apart from that. I’ve checked my Letter list. I noted that I wrote to my father on January 22, to Lily Dunford on January 30, then a note “Acknowledged all mail on 30 Jan.”. By chance one of those letters still exists, the one to my father. I don’t mention my ordeal, but say “I pass the hours reading poetry.”
By now my parents had been informed of me being a casualty. They were living at Orchard Way, Reigate, when the telegram arrived. It was stamped ‘OHMS. War Office’. My mother had opened the door, and when she saw it she called to my father, “I can’t open it.” They said they felt I had been killed. Parents must have spent a lifetime of anguish as they opened the telegrams not knowing the contents.
I was to see a Major Palmer, a Psychiatrist, whom I believe invented the revolutionary deep narcosis for the treatment of Battle Fatigue. My turn came for the interview; I told him that being in hospital I was only taking up a bed space. What I needed was a job to occupy me. He looked up and said, “I appreciate that. A lot of the bastards like to malinger here as long as they can.” He was a rugged-looking man with a broken nose, a relic from his amateur boxing days. I was told of a Scottish soldier who had to see him because of an ‘ungovernable temper’. “So you lose your temper, do you?”
“Aye, and I lash out.”
“Would you hit me?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Well, go on and try.” The Scot had lashed out, Palmer had parried and riposted with a right to the jaw, felling the Scotsman.
A novel form of Psychiatry. I wonder if it cured him. He had me posted to a Rehabilitation Camp north of Naples.
The telegram that made my parents say, “Blast, they missed him.”
MARCH 9, 1944
I’m on a lorry, with a lot of other PNs*.
≡ Psycho Neurotics
It takes us to a terrible muddy camp next to a small suburb called Afrigola. I was to be reception clerk that is, I sat in a tent at the entrance of the Camp, with a lot of Army forms. As the PNs came in I took down their details and put them in a file. All day long the battle-weary soldiers filed in; I was asked the same question, “What are they going to do with me?” and there was a hollow fear in each voice, some cried. God made gentle people as well as strong ones. Alas for the war effort, I was a gentle one.
Will Milligan recover? Will he get back in the big time among the Lance-Bombardier set? Above all, will he lose that stammer that makes him take four hours to say good morning? All this and more in Vol. 5, Goodbye Soldier, to be serialised in Gay News.
THE END
Table of Contents
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1943
SEPTEMBER 23, EVENING
SEPTEMBER 24, 1943
SEPTEMBER 24, 1400 HRS
SEPTEMBER 24, EVENING
SEPTEMBER 24, 1943
SEPTEMBER 25, 1943
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943, 0600 HRS
SEPTEMBER 28, 1943
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1943
OCTOBER 1, 1943