Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [50]
Thank God today is SUNNY.
“Look,” I shouted, kneeling and pointing a quivering finger aloft, “the sun, I tell ‘ee it’s the sun. People says ois darft, but I tell ‘ee that’s the sun. I ‘eard people in England say if they sees the sun they report it to the police.”
“Yes, yes,” says Bombardier Fuller. “And that,” he says, pointing, “is a shovel. Start fucking digging.”
“I realise,” says Vic Nash, “that with all the diggin’ I’ve done out here I must have changed the shape of Italy”
Vic is short, about five foot five, looks Jewish but isn’t. He was a pastry cook in the Old Kent Road before the war, but is now digging Command Posts.
“Why didn’t they put me in the Army Catering Corps?”
“You should have asked,” said Bombardier Trew.
“I did ask,” said Nash, a note of exasperation. “I said look, I’m a pastry cook by trade, can I go in the catering Corps?”
Nash pauses, lights a cigarette. “The Sergeant said, “Of course, you’re lucky, they need cooks in the Royal Artillery.” So I thought I was safe, but now, fuck it! Look at this lot.” He held up a shovel coagulated with mud.
We freeze as the sound of planes is heard. Whose are they, where are they?…they loom into view from the south.
“Bostons,” says Trew.
Their engines are labouring under the weight of bombs, above them and to the right are a squadron of Kittyhawks. Americans!
“For Christ sakes don’t move,” warns Edgington, “or they’ll ‘ave us.”
They move majestically towards the Abruzzi Mountains, Jerry flack peppering the air around them.
“It’s astounding that so few planes get hit,” said Deans, peering at the conflict with his right hand shading his eyes.
“Well,” I said, “it’s very difficult for the shell and the plane to be in the same place at the same time. By the law of averages it can’t happen too often.”
“Ooooooom, ‘ark at bloody Einstein,” says Nash, tapping his head with his finger. “I say this, the shell with yer number on will get you no matter where you’re standin’, for all we know there’s one on the way to us now.”
I cupped my hand to my ear and leaned forward. “List! I think I can hear it now…no…wait…no, it’s not for you, it’s for…for Mrs Ada Grolledes of Brockley.”
Even as I spoke, a plume of smoke starts to trail from one of the Bostons.
“They’ve got one,” shouted Ernie Hart enthusiastically.
The Boston turned in a slow circle and started to head back to base, we watched as it jettisoned its bombs. The smoke was still trailing from its port engine as it passed into the distance in the direction of what must have been Foggia aerodrome.
“I bet there’s a few shitty underpants up there,” said Edgington grimly.
“There’s a lot of shitty underpants down ‘ere,” said Nash, who hadn’t been able to get a bath for nearly ten days. The Boston gradually diminishes into the nothingness of distance.
“That made a nice little break,” said Ernie Hart.
It sounded heartless, but things like planes on fire were all the real entertainment we had. If a lorry crashed in a ditch, men would come from all over to see it pulled out again, anything to break the boredom.
“There’s a fortune awaiting the man who can invent portable holes. Edgington says this with a strained voice as he hurls a shovel of mud. There is a pause, then I sing:”
Oles…Portable ‘Oleeees
They’d be useful to all the troops including the Poles.
Yes we need ‘oless, portable ‘oles.
I’m stuck for words, so Edgington continues:
“It would save us all for havin’ to dig like bloody moles.”
He’s stuck, I continue:
“Shovelling lumps of mud Is very bad for me. When I started I was six foot one But now I’m four foot three.”
The flow of the muse is interrupted by the dreaded Major Evan Jenkins. He walks with his torso bent forward at a ‘’ere’s me nose, me arse is following’ angle. He looks at the hole.
“Why aren’t you digging under a camouflage net?” he said, his little beady eyes boring into our souls. The answer came very simple:
“We ‘aven’t got one, sir.”
“Send someone at once to Wagon Lines and draw one.”
“Yes, sir,” says Fuller, but the inflection sounded like “You bastard.”
“Bombardier Hart,