Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [53]
Jam-Jar puffed up in anger. “Swearing at him? He’s lucky I didn’t fuck him.”
Jam-Jar Griffin about to be run over by a jeep.
I understood his feelings, being at the OP is no holiday, being mortared and shelled along with infantry attacks starts to build up a ‘hate’. Whenever I was at the OP and saw any of our dead or wounded I really felt burned up with rage. Having lost many friends in the fighting it’s very hard to take a passive view…Gunner Forest had just come in our tent and asked if anybody could ‘read a letter to him’. Edgington volunteered; the letter readdressed from his parents’ home.
“Prepare yourself for a slight shock,” said Edgington. “From the Borough of Ealing. Rates overdue up to the month of July 1940. Three pounds eighteen shillings. If not paid within twenty days proceedings will be taken.”
Forest rose, took the letter! “Fookin’ ‘ell. A fookin’ rates demand.”
At six o’clock it’s as black as a nigger’s bum at midnight; still no news of any firing. Rain. Deans is in his cooking mood and about to hurl on to us a giant long flour-and-water pudding with curried cabbage inside. It’s christened the Mongoid Monster.
“I think we’re bloody lucky, all this grub, steaming hot, tea, marmalade duff to follow, high-altitude chocolate ration…” Edgington stops to poke some grub between his dinner manglers. “Those poor bloody Infantry lads, up in the front…”
“You’re telling me,” says Jam-Jar. “The last OP we could only get grub up by mules and they were lucky not to be eaten…Oh yer, it’s cushy back here, this—” he looked around the humble interior. “This is fucking luxury.”
“I am going to stagger you,” I said. “Luxury? You don’t know what it means.”
I was feeling in my pockets for a tin of Manikin Cheroots that my father had sent in advance of Christmas. With a great gesture I took the brown tin, opened it and let their eyes feast on it.
“Corrrr. Cigars!!!” Edgington shouted, then putting on his cross-eyed Ritz Brothers look, he took one with old world flourish and with a new world flourish stuck it behind his ear. The aroma after dinner was that of a London Club after the Port, we all felt relaxed, so we continued with our Ocarina, Guitar and Matchbox concert, this time with others joining in on empty mugs and tins. We sang and yarned until eleven o’clock, mad midnight fools that we were! Harry Edgington is singing a song he wrote to his unborn child:
Your mum and I
We spent a lifetime apart
And through the war years
We knew our heartaches
But that’s over now
And you’ve made your bow
To your mum and I.
We are all very moved, but not the 3.7 Gunners behind us, who let fly a shattering barrage. That wound up the concert. Good nights. In my damp roadside bed, with traffic a few feet from my head, I fall asleep to the tyre marks on my head.
NOVEMBER 21, 1943
MY DIARY:
SUNNY EARLY MORNING. RUSH TO HANG BLANKETS OUT TO DRY.
ALF FILDES’ DIARY:
Began sunny but developed into the usual rain.
REGIMENTAL DIARY:
At mid-day 19 battery reported 2 guns ready for action. Bombard fired. Little improvement in weather.
MRS GRONKS’ DIARY:
Cat died. Cancelled milk.
My watch points the hour of…???? My watch has stopped. Bombardier Syd ‘Butcher’ Price, he knows about watches.
Bombardier Syd ‘Butcher’ Price wearing whitewashed boots for locating in the dark.
“You have to wind it up, you see,” he said.
How silly of me. Down in our little valley there is a small stream where women of the village do laundry. I approach one who is only too glad to accept my chocolate ration to do it, her name is Maria. Everybody in Italy is called Maria, the men, the dogs, the trees.
With two guns nearly ready for firing, we’re all back on duty. Monkey 2 truck takes a party up the line to see if it’s still there. I have a good look around the area, there must be a hundred artillery pieces packed into a half mile square, ah!! Bombardier Marsden is up with the rations! A mob