Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [70]
A letter from my mother’ and father had said that my brother was to go into the RAF (as he ended up a private in the Ulster Rifles, I began to feel uneasy about my parents’ sanity). My father’s letters were getting to be a pain in the arse. He seemed obsessed with the idea that I ‘didn’t answer your mother’s letters’. Now at that time I thought he might be right, but on checking with my Correspondence log I note that I answered each and every letter. Since then and down the years to his death, he continued to insist with his accusations, so much so that I registered all my letters (over the years it cost a bloody fortune) and stuck all the receipts in a book that I presented to him on his seventieth birthday with the message:
“To dear Dad, a small token to prove that I always answer all Mum’s letters.”
He looked at it and said, “This is a fake, my memory is the real proof of your laxity in letter-writing to your poor mother.” He even wrote to all our relatives asking them to write to me and pressurise me to ‘answer his poor mother’s letters’. It was a true case of mania. He died saying: “Promise you’ll write to your mother today.” She was standing beside me at the time.
My mother’s letters were equally a mass of instructions:
“Pray to Saint Patrick and Saint Theresa every night. Go to Confession and Communion every Sunday! Say prayers morning, noon and night, always wear your scapular medals, don’t swear, keep your holy pictures in your pockets”…
How do you go into action? On your knees?
OP OFFICER: Target tanks.
ME: Yes sir, Et in secular, target tanks, Amen.
OFFICER: HE 119 Charge four.
ME: Yes sir, HE 119 Charge four. God forgive me for attempting to kill Germans.
OFFICER: Angle of sight 03 degrees.
ME: 03 degrees. Holy Virgin, bless these fire orders.
OFFICER: Right ranging.
ME: Right ranging mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Amen. Fire!
I know now that Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic, and in Yugoslavia, pissed out of his mind, went all out for medals by standing up during bombing raids and shouting to poor Randolph Churchill under a table, “Come out, you yellow swine.” Well, I wasn’t that good a Catholic.
British soldier forcing officer to paint his portrait at gunpoint.
DECEMBER 5, 1943
MY DIARY:
RAIN. GUNFIRE. BOREDOM, HOMESICK, LOVESICK.
These early December cold, rain-soaked days were hanging heavy on us all. The boredom was only alleviated by sheer effort. Off duty we would foregather at ‘Chez G Truck’ bivvy. The consumption of tea was enormous, we had more of it than ammo; for men to return from mud, shells, rain and cold to enter our little den and see a woodfire was great. Edgington was a linesman, whereas I was a wireless operator—the ratio was that of navvy and bank clerk. Edgington’s intelligence warranted more than linesman—but his performance on a wireless set during hectic fire orders would have ground the war to a halt. He couldn’t do things at anyone else’s pace, it had to be his own— he was his own total master, he gets it right, but all in his own time and you can’t do that in a war. He squats near the fire, his mug to his lips.
“Ahhh!” he gasps, “Heaven.”
“Heaven?” said cryptic-voiced Nash, “call this bloody heaven?”
“It was a momentary lapse,” said Edgington, “it’s passed off. I no longer think this is heaven—I’ll rephrase it—it’s Fucking Hell.”
Edgington has just returned from OP line maintenance, he tells us there’s very little Christmas spirit up there. The season of goodwill is stone dead, and so are our young men. We outstare the fire in silence, Nash throws his stub into the flames. The saltpetre flares blue. Fildes is uncasing his guitar.
“Gonna burn it?” said Deans.
Fildes ignores him; attentively he tunes the strings.
“Play ‘The Nearness of You’,” I said. Alf nods. “E-flat,” he says.
We all sing it. Enter Jam-Jar Griffin.
“Oops sorry, vicar—is there a