Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [26]
We are all squatting around the fire, some of us sit on broken furniture, Harry is balancing on a huge recoco three-legged chair, which gives him the appearance of a five-legged dwarf. We are all short of fags, but careful Milligan has a whole packet. I am persuaded to part with some: the method? manual strangulation.
With the sun setting we reel the last of the line in and set off for the Battery.
Bdr. Fuller, Tume and Edgington sit silently in the back of the Monkey truck.
“Monkey truck, that’s just the bloody right name for this vehicle,” says Gunner Tume, who is now desperately crouching forward trying, through the shaking, to light a dog-end that appears to have three shreds of tobacco in it. He goes on moaning.
“Monkeys, that’s what we are,” he said. “Trained khaki monkeys, and this is just one big bloody circus.”
“If only we had an audience,” I said. “We could go round with the hat.”
No one was amused. No, we were all pissed off and bloody cold. We shout through the canvas of the driver’s seat. “How much bleedin’ further, Jock?”
“I’ve nae idea,” came the Scot’s burr. “I ha tae kip askin’ the wee.”
And true to his prophecy he kept stopping to ‘ask the wee’. It was an experience to hear him asking ‘the wee’ from a puzzled Moroccan Goumier.
“Hurry up for Christ’s sake!” says Gunner Edgington. “The cook’ouse will be closed.”
“Wonder what gaff this is?” Fuller says peering out of the back.
We are passing through stone-paved streets, with silent, locked buildings each side. I guess it must be Capua.
“Hannibal had got this far south with his Carthaginians.”
“Very good, Milligan,” says Edgington. “Go to the top of the class and jump off.”
“Who were the Carthaginians?” said Bombardier Fuller.
“A Third Division team from Watford.” Edgington is speaking heatedly, it’s the only way to keep warm. “How do they expect ordinary London ‘erberts like us to find our way around bloody Italy with a half-blind Scots driver askin’ the way from A-rabs.”
We are in a queue behind a column of Sherman tanks.
“‘Ere—I remember this lot—they’re the 7 Armoured,” says Edgington.
“Tanks fer the memory,” I said.
We are about to cross the Volturno, a slow process.
“Fancy having to queue for the war.”
The Bailey Bridge over the Volturno
Infantry are marching silently past.
“They never speak,” said Harry, “don’t they ever chat to each other?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“What do they say?”
“‘Attention—Slope Arms—Chargeee’.”
We start to move. “I’m getting bloody hungry,” was a frequent statement, and it came most frequently from Edgington. He was a known hungry guts. Only one man outdid him, Driver Kidgell. Kidgell it was said, could smell a sausage at 300 yards—and hear a tin of duff being opened a mile away. What’s this? The rattle, rattle, of boards???
“‘Ere, we’re on a Bailey bridge,” says Trew, “We must be crossin’ the Volturno.”
“Ah! Guns! I hear guns,” said Edgington. “We’re getting near civilisation.”
“Move over,” an American voice is shouting. “The trucks have to get on the verge to let pass a dozen more Sherman tanks.”
Our legs are starting to get cold, our bottoms numb, our stomachs empty, our tempers short. There is a gloomy silence. Milligan to the rescue!
“My favourite sauce is Worcester,” I said.
“Worcester?” says Edgington.
“Yes.”
“My favourite is HP.” says Tume.
“I like OK sauce with bread and cheese,” says Fuller.
The truck stops on a side road, we are lost. With our very battered map and a hand-covered match we finally get on the right road. We are looking for Map Square 132832; this was a tree-lined country road just south-west of Sparanise. The Battery are ‘housed’ in a long irrigation ditch by the side of the road. Spaced about are a few derelict farm buildings. From that dark ditch come the sounds of wallops, groans and furious scratching, the place is alive with mosquitoes. Beating off the beasts we familiarise ourselves with our surroundings. The guns are adjacent and are already roaring out into the night.