Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [4]
The anchor chain is finally freed. The smoke-screen lifts to show we are now facing away from the beach.
“They’re takin’ us back again,” says Gunner Devine.
“Of course not, you silly Gunner, no, the Captain has turned his ship around in the smoke to show us how clever he is.”
There are laconic cheers as the diver surfaces.
“Caught any fish?” someone says.
He holds up two fingers.
“Is that all?”
The engines start up again, the ship swings slowly round and points toward Italy, I mean he couldn’t miss it. Sub-Section Sergeants are going around telling us to “Get ready to disembark.” Drivers are unchaining the restraining cables that secure the vehicles to the deck. The day is now a delightful mixture of sun and a cool wind. The Warspite lets off another terrifying salvo. It thunders around the bay. We watch it erupt among the hills.
“That’ll make the bastards sit up,” says Sgt. ‘Jock’ Wilson.
“I’d have thought,” I said, “it would have the opposite effect!”
“Oh hello, Spike,” he says. “How you bin enjoying the sea trip?”
“Well, Sarge, Yes and No.”
“Wot do ye mean Yes or No?”
“Well, Yes I am, and No I’m not, but mostly No I’m not, otherwise, Yes I am.”
He frowned. “You’ll never get promotion.”
Wilson was a Glaswegian, he was ‘Fitba’ (Football) mad, and his family at home were hard put to it to send him all the news cuttings on the Scottish Matches*.
≡ Scottish Matches = ones that won’t strike.
SEPTEMBER 24, 1943
REGIMENTAL DIARY:
HMS Boxer landed first party on Red Beach, Salerno Bay at 0940 hrs.
The ship touched the beach very gently, so gently I suspect it’s not insured. “Sorry about the bump, gentlemen,” said a chuckling Navy voice on the Tannoy. A cheer arose from the lads as the landing ramp was lowered. Another salvo from Warspite. At the same time an American supply ship starts to broadcast Bing Crosby singing ‘Pennies from Heaven’ over its speakers. To our right, over the Sorrento peninsula, a German plane is flying very high; pinpoints of high bursting Ack-Ack shells trace his path. Time 9.30. Sea calm.
The Tannoy crackles. Another coughing demo? No.
“Hello, is it on?—Hello, Captain Sullivan speaking.”
“Give us a song, Captain,” shouts Gunner White.
“Attention, will all men without vehicles, repeat, without vehicles, please disembark first?”
“I think I’m without vehicles,” I said to Harry.
“How about you?”
“No, I haven’t got vehicles, but they might be incubating,” says Edgington, who is, now that the sea is calm, back to his cheery self; the roses haven’t come back to his cheeks, but he tells me they’re on their way. “They have reached my knees and are due in me navel area this afternoon.”
The Tannoy: “Will men without vehicles disembark now?”
“We’ve been spoken for, Harry,” I said as we trundle down the gangways to the ‘Floor’ of the Boxer. We were about to set foot on Italy. The jaws of the Boxer are opened on to a sunlit beach.
“ I could never have afforded all this travel on my own,’” I say. “It had to be the hard way, World War 2. I’ve always wanted to see Russia, I suppose that would mean World War 3.”
I don’t believe it, we were walking down the broad ramp on to the Salerno beaches, no bullets! no shells! and I didn’t even get my feet wet, as I leave my first footprint in the sand. I shout loudly “TAXI!”, and point in the direction it’s coming from. “The woods are full of them,” I add.
We move in a milling throng on to the beach. I start the sheep bleating and soon we are all at it, much to the amusement of the seamen watching from top deck. The scenery by L/Bdr. Milligan: the beaches are a mixture of volcanic ash and sand, the colour of milky coffee, it stretches left and right as far as the eye can see. Strewn along the beaches is the debris of a battle that had raged here; an occasional German long-range shell explodes in the bay. There are no hits. The beaches vary from twenty to thirty yards deep. Back from this is a mixture of pines, scrub, walnut trees and sand hillocks mounted with Tuffa