Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [68]
We have to double up on Command Post duties, one signaller on the wireless set, one on the telephone and the Tannoys to the guns.
“Christ, no sleep for us tonight,” said Ernie Hart.
Ben Wenham is testing the dags, and topping them up with distilled water.
“Give ‘em a little drinkypoos,” he said, talking to himself.
The OP party have left, Lt. Walker, Bombardier Trew, Jam-Jar Griffin, Pinchbeck, they’ve gone in our newly acquired jeep, with a ‘cheese cutter’ on the bonnet. This was an upright metal bar that was introduced when Jerry patrols started putting taut thin wire across a road after dark, which resulted in decapitating the passengers. Long lines of supply mules are heading up the line, kicking, braying, biting, their Cypriot handlers forever leaping out of the way with shouts of “Oushi! Oushi!” The weather has grounded all flying (it’s even grounded walking) though we do hear one lone plane that sounds like a Jerry, it is, he drops some splinter bombs in a graveyard!
“I think he’s losing his nerve,” said Lt. Stewart Pride.
All is ready for the big do, codename ‘KONKER’.
A sub gun lets off occasional harassing fire so the pre-barrage silence is not too obvious. Edgington is out with the line maintenance signallers. Every half-hour a check call comes through from them.
“Hello, Line Maintenance here, line OK?”
“Yes, OK.”
“Thank fuck.”
Yes, we were all fully employed.
0200. Barrage Starts
After preliminary fire orders are given to the guns, the fire plan takes over and we just sit and wait for targets from the OP. There are nearly a thousand guns savaging the night.
0400. The Attack Goes In
Like a miracle the rain stopped just before zero hour. Is God on our side?
A Tale of Gunner Edgington
‘Twas a dark and stormy night and the Monkey Truck signallers lay dead asleep. At the soul-shattering hour of 0100 hours, with a gale blowing and rain squalling the tempest-black night, a cry is hurled among the dormant bodies.
“The OP line is ‘dis’.”
Reacting like a Pavlov dog, Edgington rises, dons his boots, and plunges into the night. He follows the wire, falls into a three-foot muddy stream, mends the break. At dawn, while we were taking the first tea of the day, a spectre appears at the Command Post entrance, it is the same height as Edgington…it is Edgington, from head to foot it drips with water and mud overlaid with a fine layer of frost. Two eyes look out from the mud. It groans.
“Edgington!” said Vic Nash, “you naughty, naughty boy, I’ve told you never to play with those boys next door! You just wait until your father comes home.” Nash is lucky to be alive.
DECEMBER 2, 1943
MY DIARY:
MISSED BREAKFAST.
“Sorry I’m late, Ronnie,” I said in a grovelling voice, “I didn’t get to sleep till late.”
“I’m sorry, matey, it’s all gone, there’s some tea left, and some bread.”
“Tea and bread? Oh yum yum, can you make the tea as cold as possible, and the bread nice and stale, I don’t want to get used to luxuries.”
Ronnie May grinned. I always wondered why a man with such a refined Etonian accent ended up cooking. Apparently he came from a very upper class family in the jewellery business. He went to Harrow and but for the war would have gone to Oxford. He had fallen in love with a working class girl, and the family frowned on the prospect of marriage. The war had come along and to prove that he wasn’t a snob he had turned down a commission and become a cook. This was all to impress the girl, who then went off with an officer. I reheated the tea on Spike Deans’ primus, and toasted the bread on the G truck fire. Seeing my foodless plight Deans says, “Would you like something to spread on that?”
“Oh Christ, yes,” I said.
“There’s some boot polish in my pack.”
The utter swine. Revenge! I contacted Bombardier Sloggit at RHQ. He worked in the Q stores. He in turn phoned Deans and said,