Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [56]
Terrible guts due to this prolonged tinned food.
Strange? I didn’t know our tinned food was prolonged! When did I last hear a gunner asking for a tin of ‘ ‘Prolonged Meat Stew’? We now have a serious problem with Wireless Communication, that is, we haven’t any. Talk of putting out a half-way wireless relay station.
Gunner Edgington’s Public Appearance
“Crabs! They’ve got crabs!” the cry runs through the serried ranks.
The ‘Theys’ were the crew of Monkey 2, it was the first mass outbreak of crabs in the Battery, how proud we were of them, at last the label dirty bastards could be added to the Battery honours. The only other mass outbreak of crabs was Gunner Neat in Bexhill. He told the MO he got them off a girl in Blackpool. “I brought them south for the sun, sir,” he said.
Among the crab-ridden is Gunner Edgington. Let him recount the grisly details.
We hadn’t had our clothes off for some considerable time, much less our underwear, such as it might have been, and as I’ve said, a bath was something we only vaguely remembered from long ago. My hair was a matted lump. The whole world we knew at that time was to get phone lines out and keep them going—all else was sleep and food and a good deal of the latter was often scrounged from strange outfits we encountered while out on the line.
Nor surprisingly we began to smell strongly and then to scratch: the irritation became incessant and something obviously had to be done: I don’t think Bentley came to us…it was just arranged by phone calls, that we go over to RHQ.
I think there must’ve been more than the M.2 team, for the ‘crab-ridden’ were taken in a three-tonner to where some showers had been erected in the corner of a field. The showers were a Heath Robinson contraption mounted under a tin roof on angle-iron supports, but they were thoroughly efficient.
Capt. Bentley, keeping a distance, called down instructions from the safety of his room on an upper floor of an adjacent building.
“Strip off!” he called to us, and this was just the Monkey 2 gang at this point. “Have a thorough wash-down all over as hot as you can possibly stand it.”
In the middle of this field, in full view of civilians and soldiers alike, we disported ourselves joyously under four very efficient jets of steam and near-boiling water to the accompaniment of screams, yells and cackles.
“Blimey, you can see the bloody things! See ‘em moving under the skin? Those little bastards.”
Sure enough, I could see my collection in the skin of my belly just above the ‘short-and-curlies’.
Some five minutes, and Bentley calls: “OK, that’s enough—get up here like lightning!”
Away we went in a tight bunch for the steps which led up the side of the building; these being only wide enough to permit one at a time, it meant some of us had to ease back to create a single-file rush up the stairs, all naked and freezing. Into a small bare room we thundered, its only furniture a bare table, on which stood in a row seven empty cigarette tins, and a large dob of cotton wool alongside—no sign of Bentley though.
Looking round puzzled, we see his grinning face peering round a distant door at the far end of the room—he had no wish to get near us. The legend ‘crabs can jump six feet’ still lingered on.
“Right! Each man grab a tin and a blob of cotton wool. Dip the cotton wool into the tin and dab it generously all over the affected parts…quickly now, quickly!” He slammed the door, in case any escaped.
Looking in my tin I saw a clear mauve liquid. The lads were all still chortling and crying in mock agony—“Unclean! Unclean!”, the war-cry we had been bellicosely hollering from the lorry that brought us—and ringing imaginary handbells.
The fluid was liberally applied—backs, balls and bellies as well—not one of us having guessed what it was, it took about ten to fifteen seconds to act. Then everyone’s balls caught fire. It was raw alcohol.
The first “Cor-mate!” was rapidly echoed all round, followed by a growled “Awww! Gawd blimey!!” Faces were transfixed with pain and cross-eyed agony, they yelled, they screamed, they fell