Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [2]
A Gunner faints. “What’s up?” we ask.
“I thought I heard someone say please.”
“Attention…This is the Captain speaking…(What a good memory he had)…In three minutes the Ack-Ack guns will be firing test bursts…this is only a practice, repeat, practice.”
Soon the sky was festooned with erupting shells, black puffs of smoke with a red nucleus from the barrels of the multiple Pom Poms. The Tannoy again.
“Hello this is your—” a burst of amplified coughing follows.
“It’s the resident consumptive,” I said.
The coughing ceases. “Attention, that practice firing will be repeated every morning at—” Coughing—coughing—“at”—coughing…
The helmsman’s face showed white through the wheel house..
“I feel a sudden attack of roll-call coming on,” I said.
I was right. Sgt. King lines us up on deck. We answer our names and anyone’s that isn’t there; even if they called “Rasputin” a voice answers “Sah.”
“Milligan?”
“Sah!”
“Devine?”
“Sah!”
“Edgington?…Edgington?”
From the deck below comes a weak voice “Sah!” followed by retching.
Britannia rules the waves, but in this case, she waives the rules. A roar of engines, the Spitfires return, we all get up again. They repeat roaring back and forth through the day, we get used to it, we get so used to it that when a Focke Wolfe shoots us up, we’re all standing up, aren’t we? Breakfast is happening in the galley.
“I have been a slave to breakfast all my life but breakfast and a galley slave never!” says Kidgell.
We lined up head on to a trio of Navy cooks, who doled out Spam Fritters, Bread, Marge, Jam and Tea and avoided looking at it when they did. We ate on top deck enjoying the sea breeze, the pleasant weather…were we really going to war or were we on our way to Southend for the day? As Kidgell is licking his mess-tin clean the klaxons go, submarine scare! Immediately the destroyers start circling, gun crews scramble to their mounts, the barrels trained down…A false alarm! Curses! I wanted to see the Greeny wake as the missile raced from the U-boat, a sneer on the German Captain’s lips, “Take zat, Englander.” On the bridge of HMS Dauntless, Lt. Wynford-Beaumont-Plague turned his trim little craft towards the black periscope. “Full speed ahead.” The words came through clenched teeth and fists. Too late, the Germans suddenly see the bows of the British destroyer slice through the conning tower, splitting the Kaiser’s picture into a thousand fragments. “We didn’t even get a depth charge,” says Kidgell.
“My God,” I said, “is there a charge on depth now?”
A long green groaning thing is approaching. The identity tags say ‘Edgington. 953271 C of E.’
“Was that a Jerry sub?” he said.
“No, it was a false alarm,” I said.
“Oh dear,” he moaned, “I wanted something to cheer me up.”
He managed a wry smile, opened a tin marked ‘Emergency Chocolate Ration’, and took out a cigarette; never a stingy one he offered them round. The fact there was only one in the tin left much to be desired. I desired it so I took it.
“You sod,” he said. We shared it.
“You feeling any better?” I asked.
He groaned, “Argggggg. I’m no bloody good at sea.”
“But you’re always at sea, Harry.”
“I’ve missed me bloody breakfast.”
“We’ve just had breakfast, and believe me, you haven’t missed anything.”
Edgington’s empty stomach rumbles loudly. “Spitfires,” shouts Kidgell. We all get up again.
“What was for breakfast?” he said.
“We don’t know,” I said. “There’s a court of enquiry this afternoon.”
Mid-day, the sun is out, it’s that perfect temperature, not hot not cold, like Naafi tea.
SEPTEMBER 23, EVENING
MY DIARY:
SIGHTED NORTH WEST TIP OF SICILY!
If my geographical recollections were right, that would be Capo San Vito. It wasn’t. In the evening light inland mountains seemed made of purple mist; on the sea was a green-grey seafret; to the primitive mariner it must have given birth to legends, to Gunner Liddel it gave forth to “I wonder what’s for dinner.” He watches a destroyer’s evasive zig-zag course. “Driver must be pissed,” he says.
He’d been a regular for eleven years and had risen to the rank