Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [33]
“Too hot is it?” enquired Deans.
I lay rolling on the ground begging for water.
“I’ll break it down a bit,” he said, and started mixing in hot water, turning the whole thing into a ghastly-looking death grey.
“What’s this stringy stuff,” said munching Edgington.
“That?” said Deans. “It’s grass.”
There was a shocked silence. Edgington, his mouth still open with shock. “Grass?” he said, “GRASS??”
“Now don’t get angry,” said Deans, “it’s grass but specially selected.”
“Yes,” Edgington said, “specially selected for idiots like us! I’m not givin’ you five fags for bloody grass. I mean, I can graze free with the bloody cows.”
“Look! if you think you’ve been diddled, OK, but answer the question; until Trotsky ‘ere—” he pointed to Edgington “—asked what it was, you were all enjoying it, weren’t you? Believe me, in the Alps Maritime, this dish is considered a delicacy.”
It did taste OK really, and by now the cookhouse would be closed, so basically we had no option.
“But,” Birch added, “we should have been given warning.”
“I wanted there to be an element of surprise in it.”
“Oh, we were fucking surprised alright,” said White, who then broke the bad news. “And I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “I haven’t got any fags.”
“You sod,” said Deans.
White grinned. “All life is six to four against,” he said.
A head pokes in the dug-out, it’s Ben Wenham.
Spike Deans waiting to steal a lorry.
“The news is on in the Command Post.”
We all rush there to hear the BBC Announcer saying, “Heavy rain and conditions under foot, are slowing the Allied advance in Italy.”
“Good heavens, it’s raining here then,” said Edgington, putting on an idiot grin. “It’s strange—he never mentioned it.”
“Mentioned what?”
“He never mentioned that in Italy we’d had curried grass for dinner.”
I was on CP duty from eight-thirty. The weather had stopped the war. There was no firing save a few pre-planned harassing fire tasks. I wrote a letter home, then played Battleships with Lieutenant Wright, a slight, dark-eyed, gentle-faced young man, who looked as out of place in a war as Quasimodo in the Olympic high-jump finals. (Supposing he’d won?) We had the 22 Set beamed on to Allied Forces Network, now operating from Naples. I remember that night how nostalgic I got when just before midnight they started to play Duke Ellington—Riverboat Shuffle! Outside I went knee-deep in water and did my own Riverside Shuffle back to my dug-out. My bed was raised on two large empty 8lb potato tins. Edgington was awake, writing a 10,000-page love letter to Peg.
“Still up?” I said.
“No,” he said. “It went down an hour ago.” He took the fag from his mouth. “I’m drawing on my last reserves of energy.”
“Very quiet in the Command Post,” I said as I slid my muddy boots off. “I beat Mr Wright three games to nil at Battleships.”
“If that gets around he could be cashiered,” said Edging-ton.
I pulled myself wearily under my blankets. (Hadn’t I better rephrase that?) I fell asleep leaving sexually frustrated Edgington trying to work it out in writing. He certainly had a lot of lead in his pencil.
OCTOBER 27, 1943
REGIMENTAL DIARY:
Infantry pushing forward all day, we are bombarding and firing Y targets. Some slight enemy retaliation but not much.
Good news! We are allowed to write home and actually tell our families that we are in Italy. Oh hooray.
Dear Mother,
I am in Italy.
Your loving son,
Barmy Fred.
Rumours of yet another ‘big attack’. The rain has stopped, a wind is blowing, so I will hang out my laundry that now lies reeking at the bottom of my big pack. Diving into those dark depths I pull out dreadful lumps of congealed mildewed clothing. Soon I am boiling a tin of water. Whhheeee Boom! an air-burst shell. It stops, I arise and see that the water is boiling, I drop in my clothes, then half a bar of soap and start stirring the lot with a stick. My idyll is shattered by another air burst; was Hitler trying