Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [8]
Yes. I remembered being Stuka-ed, the evidence of this was a six-foot-deep trench at the bottom of which looking up white-faced and saying ‘Tell Hitler I’m sorry’ was Lance-Bombardier Milligan. What did Basenji mean?
My slit-trench was in the angle of a farm-hut wall and a raised bank. All day Jerry 155mm shells were passing over our positions.
“They’re after the 25-pounders in the field behind us,” says Sgt. Ryan.
“Behind?” I said, turning yellow. “Christ, we’re far forward for heavies.”
“Forward?” he giggled. “We had bloody Nebelwurfers in this field this afternoon.”
Ryan had excelled himself. In the absence of an OP he had aligned his gun on Monte Mango by looking up the barrel, elevating it a bit above that, and by God, he was actually dropping the shells right on target.
I was surplus to requirements so I spent the afternoon writing letters, and eating handfuls of purple grapes that grew above my trench. I’d read about Conquerors partaking of the spoils of war. What I hadn’t read about was the terrifying attack of the shits that followed.
Dear Mum, Dad and Des.
We’ve been moved, I’m not allowed to say where. We had spaghetti for lunch. The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the Psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.
I am keeping well, we don’t go hungry in this war, the Compo Rations are very good, that’s if you get to the box first—this is the first day in this country, so I haven’t caught anything yet. I would welcome any books, periodicals and newspapers, preferably ones that say the war is over, and believe me the war is over…over here. I’m writing this in a hole in the ground, it’s convenient, because if you get killed, they just fill the hole in and sell it as a cemetery. That’s all the cheery news, will write again when the situation is a little less fraught.
Loving son, Terry.
I lit up a cigarette and lay back. Mind a blank. The guns roar, the night comes. Grapevine message, “Dinner”, across the field with mess-tins, I am walking on a field that has been laying fallow for a few years. One still feels the furrows where the plough once moved. In the corner of the field under some walnut trees, a heavily camouflaged cook-house is operating, and by the screams they are operating without an anaesthetic. In the queue I find Kidgell and Edgington.
“Where you been hiding?” is the merry greeting.
“Hiding? me hiding? that’s a malicious rumour, I haven’t been hiding. I have been standing on the peak of a mountain, swathed in a Union Jack, with a searchlight beaming on me and I have been crying ‘Come on you German swines, and feel the taste of British steel!’ Do you call that hiding?”
“That’s a load of cobblers.”
“Talking of cobblers,” says Kidgell, “wot are those terrible things floating in the stew?”
“Mines,” says our cook. “But don’t worry, they’re ours.”
It is a Maconochie Stew, and it tastes bloody marvellous. We sit with our backs against a bren carrier. The odd gun falls silent as the gun-teams take turns for their meal. It’s dark now, all around the unending roar of artillery. Odd rumours.
“They say he’s starting to pull out and our patrols are on the outskirts of Naples.”
“Cor, Naples, eh?”
We would all like to be in Naples. It would be the first European city since we left England nearly two years ago. We’ve all been warned of the ‘dangers’. If the brochure was telling the truth, venereal disease was walking the streets of Naples and one could contact it just by shaking hands with a priest. The BQMS has passed a message we won’t be getting any mail for a week, he says things like that to cheer himself up. Amid the gunfire we hear a droning, a lone plane, it’s Jerry, he drops a green flare. It was so pretty we all cheered when it came on.
“Milligan???? Milligan????” A voice is calling.
“Is that you mother?” I reply.
It’s Bombardier Fuller, he is saying, “Pack