Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [18]
OCTOBER 14, 1943
MY DIARY NOTES:
DISGRACEFUL! I HAVE SEEN THE RSM WITH A FIFTY TIN, AND HE TOLD US NO FAGS WERE IN STORE. THEY ARE IN STORE…HIS BLOODY STORE. FOOD TERRIBLE, BULLY BEEF AND HALF A MUG OF TEA FOR BREAKFAST, HERE WE WERE NEARER TO INDIA THAN ENGLAND, AND ONLY HALF A MUG OF BLOODY TEA.
There was a revenge party on the RSM’s wagon. In the small hours, when he slept in nicotined bliss, the sufferers had pushed his wagon a mile out of the depot into a siding.
OCTOBER 15, 1943
Thank God!! “You are being transferred,” said the RSM, whose name was Death. (What happened if he was killed in Action? We regret to announce the death of Death?) “You are being transferred to the CPC.”
British infantry rowing boat up street in search of a river.
I envisaged another endless lorry journey, but no!!! It was in the same marshalling yard. I wrote home and told my folks I was now serving under Marshal Yard. This time I was billeted on the edge of the Complex. It was a building, one-time offices, I was in a basement with windows at ground level. Outside, the River Sarno ran past the window, looking left I could see the beach, and offshore the Isola Revigliano with the remains of a Roman lighthouse. Just what I needed! The difference in the lifestyle here was great. Regular fag issue, and good food, I even noted down the Menu!
MENU Breakfast: Bread, 1 pint tea
Sausage bacon onion and fried bully
Porridge
Biscuits. Marg and jam
Lunch: Cheese
Beans and tomato sauce
Potatoes (creamed)
Bread and jam
Dinner: Meat rissoles.
Fried potatoes
Spaghetti and tomato
Fried onions
Mashed potato
Peas
Fruit and cust.
Tea and biscuits
–and it never lessened in its constancy. Seven cigs a day and matches. Fifty fags from Naafi once a week (not free).
Towering above the countryside, with vines growing on its lower slopes, was the ominous shape of Vesuvius, like me it smoked heavily. At night, from my bed, I could see the purple-red glow from its throat, it looked magnificent. At one time it had looked so to those doomed people, the Pompeians, but I wasn’t a Pompeian, I was Irish, how could Vesuvius wipe out Dublin? No, I was perfectly safe, but Vesuvius wasn’t. I discovered that Pompeii was but three miles as the crow flies. This incredible relic of a Roman city free of camera-clicking tourists was a situation I had to thank Hitler for. Thank you, Hitler!
HITLER:
You hear zat, Goebbels? Milligan is visiting Pompeii. Keep all tourists out, and zer ruins in!
After roll-call, accompanied by a Private Webb, we hitched and walked till we arrived at the gates. There was no one about, save a sleepy unshaven attendant, who said he had no tickets and charged twenty lire to go in, which he put straight into his pocket. It was a day I shall treasure, a day I met the past, not only the past but the people from it, be it they were now only plaster casts. I had read Pliny the Younger’s account of that terrible day of destruction, Gells Pompiana and several text-books, so I was reasonably well informed. We had gone in the entrance that opened on to the amphitheatre and the Grande Palestra on our right. The excitement it generated in me was unbelievable, and it stayed with me all day. I don’t think there are many sights as touching as the family who died together in the basement of their home, off the Via Vesuvio, the mother and father each side of three little girls, their arms protecting them this two thousand years. There were the lovers who went on banging away even though being suffocated. He must have been a Gunner. What a way to go!
All through that warm dusty day I wandered almost