Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [43]
We hear him fall in the dark and fade away swearing to himself. I shout through the canvas, “Don’t forget, dawn’s early light.” Came the answer, “Balls.” Oh what a lovely war. Not so lovely when we hear by the grapevine that our PBI are suffering 50 per cent casualties. Thank God I’m not in the Infantry. So ended Armistice Day, what a day to die.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1943
On this day my diary is blank. I think this is because I was too busy moving, as is borne out by Fildes’ diary that says: Move forward at 0500 hrs to new position. As usual the digging in the crackpot major loves so well. Beautiful country and orchard—mountains far away snow crested now. Lovely apples make place too much like England with green downs and autumn leaves. Xmas greetings mail being issued.
0500 hours! No wonder I didn’t make any entry in the diary. However I have this excerpt from a letter I wrote home on the thirteenth and in it I say:
“…today is like an English Summer’s day, birds sing their repetitive little phrases, the village overlooking the field I’m in looks like a drawing from a Hans Andersen Fairy Story, excuse the writing but I’m laying down…”
So where were we? The map reference was 999003 and that indicates a place called Monte Santa Maria. I never knew that Maria was Saint No. 999003.
OK. So what can I think up on the apple orchard position?…Well—like I said…it’s a bit of a blur, except for the orchard itself which is very clear in memory—plus the view from the corner of it, of not-so-distant peaks,* snow-capped in the chilly Autumn morning, and rose-tinted, unmistakably, and spectacularly, in the early dawn light—the very first time I had ever seen, and I suspect a few other English city-dwellers like me, such a magnificent natural phenomenon.
≡ Abruzzi Mountains.
If I can take a guess at the orientation in say the long axis of the raggedly-oval-shaped orchard, maybe sixty-eighty feet in length, was east-west, roughly, and those unearthly beautiful peaks were laying about south-east* as we peered southward over the thick hedge that completely surrounded the orchard.
≡ Wrong. It was North. He’s lost as usual.
The altitude was accentuated by the fact the peaks seemed to be at about the same level as us across a deep valley* and to its east.
≡ The Valley was the Garigliano Plain (Eh?).
Of the apples in the orchard we identified at least six familiar types, though I’m sure there were considerably more trees than that. Russets, Granny Smith’s, Big Canadian Reds, Cox’s Orange Pippins were among those I can still recall, while one tree had produced what Alf and I concluded must have been a cross between an apple and a pear, rather small, delicious to eat, and having a quite marked perfume or scent into the bargain. I recall that under each tree there was a veritable carpet of its apples—windfalls—and the scene under the Big Canadian Red tree was something to marvel at—the darkish-red, highly-polished skins glistening with diamond-like drops of moisture all catching the fitful shafts of sunlight just breaking through the foliage. Only half an hour later or maybe less we found ourselves being nearly suffocated by the onset of a large patch of very dense mountain mist, the minute droplets of water-vapour being concentrated as to bring visibility down to almost nil and clog our breathing alarmingly: it only lasted a few minutes but we got really panicky in that time.
This coloured drawing—now that I’ve finished it—won’t mean much, if anything, to a stranger reading the book, and the lads themselves—other than the Monkey 2 team—may not recognise much of it, since the guns were virtually out of sight from the road in the lower-level corner of the next field, perhaps 200 yards or more from the road.
Edgington’s crayon masterpiece, thirty years on
Certainly I’ve visualised it from a position nobody could possibly have occupied—twenty feet or so up in the air among the roadside trees of a fairly dense wood on the left hand side of the road as you came up it.
Edgington