Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [42]
Sgt. J. Wilson, Bdr. Sainsbury and gun-crew filling in football coupons, Monte Santa Maria, apple orchard position, November 17 1943.
NOVEMBER 10, 1943
MY DIARY:
MUCH THE SAME. BAD WEATHER. WENT INTO THE VILLAGE OF TERRA CORPO, IT’S ALMOST IN RUINS. WE ARE TRYING TO GET A PHOTO TAKEN OF OURSELVES BY AN ‘ITI’ PHOTOGRAPHER, HE SAYS ‘DOMANI’ (TOMORROW). HE SAYS THAT EVERY DAY, TOMORROW TAKES A LONG TIME TO ARRIVE IN ITALY. WEATHER RAIN, SLEET, WINDY.
Just up the road before the village are a few houses, one is occupied by RHQ. It is owned by a Doctor Fabrizzi, who was in the Abyssinian Campaign. We went there to play some music for the RHQ Signallers (who had invited us). It was a cosy large front room, nicely furnished, with a piano. We played some jazz, the Doctor, who looked like Cesar Romero, showed us photographs from the Abyssinian War, and a ghastly collection they were; they showed atrocities committed on Italian soldiers, which mostly meant emasculating them with a knife and letting them bleed to death. A Scandal! the wife of the Iti doctor fancies our MO, Dr Bentley (will he end up with his photo in the album?), and somehow they get down to Naples and spend a naughty weekend there. A touch of the Ernest Hemingways!
It has rained now continuously for five days. Sgt. Donaldson tells me that the guns are in a bad state. The carriages are starting to warp so badly that 15 and 18 Batteries are being pulled out of action.
“I wish to God my carriage would warp,” I said.
“You know what they’re going to do to reinforce them, weld railway lines round the front and the two sides.”
“I suppose this means all the bloody trains will stop running.” Sgt. Donaldson was up for some kind of vehicles’ inspection.
“I don’t know how the bloody things are still working.” He was going on about the road conditions.
“They’ve organised a one-way system, half the day it’s up traffic, the other half down traffic, if you come up early you have to wait half the bloody day before the down system comes in.”
“Don’t come up or down,” I said, “come sideways, like the Chinese.”
He stayed to have lunch with us, a lovely Stew, we sat under the altar of the church eating and telling dirty jokes. It was a bad day for God.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1943
Armistice Day. Ha ha ha.
Lt. ‘Johnny’ Walker is at an OP on Monte Croce. He is suspicious that a white farmhouse is harbouring the enemy, so he drops a few 200 pounders around it; as they get closer a door bursts open and out rush a Jerry patrol who run like hell to a farmhouse a hundred yards away. Walker then shells that place, out runs Jerry back to farmhouse one, he does this till the Jerries are shagged out and finally double back to their own lines. “When I fight an enemy, I like to keep them fit,” says Walker.
That night fairly quiet in the Command Post, Lt. Stewart Pride not feeling very well. “I must report sick in the morning,” he says. “Any music on the wireless?”
I fiddle with the knobs. We are surrounded by hills and the reception is very bad. I get what sounds like someone singing in Yugoslavian.
“I don’t understand, Milligan,” says Stewart Pride, “you can’t get our bloody OP, which is only half a mile away, yet you can get some idiot singing in Yugoslavia.”
“That’s because he’s singing very loud, sir. If our signallers at the OP could be given training in opera, it would be easy.”
It’s two in the morning, bloody cold, Edgington has just come off Telephone Exchange duty, he comes into the Command Post for a warm. “Cor, it’s taters,” he says, making straight for the brazier. We all stand round it, the twigs crackling.
“What was the news tonight?” says Edgington.
“The Russians are advancing in all directions including upwards. The Allies are making steady progress, and Harry Roy is in hospital with appendicitis.”
Edgington grins at Stewart Pride. “Do you like Harry Roy?” he says.
“I don’t know, I’ve never met him,” says Stewart Pride.
Buttoning up his overcoat Edgington bids us goodnight. “I will see ‘ee in dawn’s rosy