Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [48]
I take another swig from the rum ration in my water bottle, ghastly, I take another swig from my rum ration, ghastly…I take a swig from my rig ration. I take a rash from my swig.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943
The BBC News:
“Heavy rain in Italy is slowing the Allied advance.”
(Advance? What advance?) Today was a crisis day, the drivers tell us of chaos on the roads: flooding and cataclysmic subsidence has all but brought traffic to a halt. A Recce party return with the news that we have a new gun position at 966976.
“Come to romantic 966976 and take the waters, wallow in health-giving mud baths.” I am saying all this from my den when Edgington’s voice draws nigh.
“Hist! I hear a voice from yon catacomb.” He pops his head under the gas cape. “Come on, I’m off to brekker.”
The rain is running down the gas cape he holds over his head. I still feel groggy, but I don my clothes; together we slurp-slurp-slither towards the cookhouse. It’s in a large tent among the apple trees. At the serving table stand Ronnie May and Charlie Booth. They’ve been up since six making the grub. Again! A fried egg! some spam stuff, bread, jam and tea.
Slip-slop-slur we go, sheltering the food under our capes. The Command Post fire is almost out. Wenham is inside, disconnecting the ‘Dags’.
“I’m leavin’ two new ones,” he says in his Sussex burr.
Lt. Wright comes in behind us. “Oh dear, who’s let the fire out?”
We quickly add more twigs. The twigs are very damp, but when they burn have a lovely applewood smell.
Still no firing, we call up the OP. Lt. Walker wants to speak to Lt. Wright, they pass pleasantries, he hands me back the phone. I speak to Bdr. Eddie Edwards.
“What’s it like up there?”
“Bloody wet, Jerry is very quiet, it’s live and let live at the moment, though he did a bit of mortaring around us last night.”
“Don’t come back here, you’ll be killed by boredom. Is it dry up there?”
“Yes, we’re in a building, what’s left of it.”
“I give up. What’s left of it?” I laugh.
“You silly bugger.”
“You know the guns are out of action.”
“Yes, I know, but we’ve got to stay here for Observation, we’ve been flash-spotting Jerry guns at night.”
“Well, I’m just going to finish me tea. See ya.” To emulate the events that happened the rest of the day, carry out the following exercise: pour three buckets of water over yourself, face a blank wall and chain smoke.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1943
Today was, as Sean O’Casey said, “A state of Chassis’. Everything is now mud brown—men, machines, trees, mountains, apples. I hear Edgington singing ‘It’s a Brown World without you’ to the tune of ‘It’s a Blue World without you’. I try and match it with ‘When the Brown of the Night meets the Brown of the Day, someone waits for me’. He tops that with ‘When you hear that serenade in Brown’. I go on with ‘Brown Moon, I saw you standing alone’. I sing ‘Am I Brown,” he sings ‘St Louis Browns’ then ‘In my dear little Alice Brown Gown’.
“Brown Skies.”
“Brown Birds over the Brown Cliffs of Dover.”
We have to be ready by mid-day. The only way to get the guns out of the mud is tractors. We are to try the Americans.
“Americans?” gasps our Major. “No, we must never sink that low.”
“We are sunk that low, that’s why we need them,” we informed him. To our aid came three giant American tractors. They eventually help us on to the road facing north-east; Fuller revs up his motor bike.
“Follow me,” he says, and goes straight into the ditch. It was all too much.
We leap out and pull the bike off him. What did he look like??? His face had disappeared; he is now convulsed with laughter.
I am now travelling with Ernie Hart, a thin cadaverous face, the rims of his eyes always looked red and