Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [51]
Hart grins, he offs and soon we watch Monkey Truck pull away up the road. Jenkins is still trouble-hunting.
“Have you a track plan?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Where is it?”
Hurriedly I invented the track plan. “We keep to the edge of the drop and when we reach the road we turn right under the trees, sir.”
“Mmmm,” was all he said.
A track plan was this: so as not to leave new trails all over the landscape, we all kept to one path to draw less attention from Jerry observation planes. As the entire landscape was one great churned-up mud bath it didn’t matter where you walked or drove, as the water in the mud washed away all traces of a track, but to keep the peace we pretended. We watched him as he dutifully walked along the edge of the drop keeping to the ‘track plan’ that didn’t exist. He did stop and pause once and look back as though he didn’t believe me, then he walked on. Fuck him.
We continue combined digging and moaning. By evening we have a large dank Command Post ready. First thing, the fire!!! After the addition of twigs and a tin full of Derv, whoooosh, it ignites and settles down to give a friendly warmth. We hide inside for a while as Ben Wenham fixes up the lights.
“Lazy buggers,” he says, seeing us all huddled around the fire.
“Lazy buggers,” explodes Edgington. “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?”
Specialists are coming in with their gear. Signallers are setting up the No. 22 wireless set, connecting up the batteries. Mr Wright is duty officer, he ducks under our black-out curtain and surveys our efforts, “Very nice, ten out of ten.” Ernie Hart has come in with extra firewood. “And what nice gunner is going to help bring in the Yule log?” He throws the firewood in a corner.
Yule log! My God! It would soon be December…The first away from home.
“Out of the bloody way,” says Shapiro, who backs in with a drum of Don 5 Cable. Behind him comes Pinchbeck, they’ve been laying a line from the OP and are well covered in muck.
“Where would you like it, me Lord?” says Shapiro.
I point to a spot by the wireless. Pinchbeck is baring the two wires with his pliers, and with professional deftness connects the telephone and buzzes the OP. Shapiro watches, a cigarette between his lips. Pinchbeck buzzes again, a look of anxiousness on his face. If the line isn’t through, it means they have to traverse the whole bloody line again to find what’s wrong. Pinchbeck smiles.
“Hello, OP? OK?…Yes, fine here…what? You’ll be bloody lucky.” He grins and hangs up. “Cheeky buggers, they want to know if tea will be served on the lawn.”
“Who was it?” I said.
“Jam-Jar.”
“Tea on the lawn,” mocks Ernie Hart. “Where ‘e lives he ‘asn’t got a bloody lawn.”
“That is a truth,” says Edgington pontifically, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s face it, like us he is a common or garden citizen.”
“…and,” I added, “as we haven’t got a garden or a common, that’s why we’re in this bloody hole in the ground.”
“Grub up,” a voice from outside speaks and enters by pushing a dixie of hot stew, followed by a hand then a body belonging to Bombardier Edwards. There is a mass exodus, but I am clutched by the arm.
“You stay and make like you’re on duty,” says Bombardier Fuller.
Bugger! I seek solace in a fag. Opposite me, Lt. Wright sits on a wooden box reading a book. It made little difference if he was sitting on a book reading a wooden box. It’s all very cushy, with the fire going, with headphones on I’m wrapped up with the music. A tap on the shoulder, turning I see Ernie Hart.
“I come to release you from your bondage.”
“What’s for dinner?”
“It’s M & V again.”
“They must run out of it one day!”
The batmen and slave labour have built a very fine officers’ mess cum billet, they have laboured the long day to achieve it, ‘Woody’ (Jenkins’ Batman) tells us.
“Next we’s goin’ to build a bloody ‘otel with hot worter.”
NOVEMBER 20, 1943
The morning of November 20 burst cheerily on us with an exciting cold downpour. Gad! It was good to be alive, the question was, were we? We are concluding the