Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [80]
Walker but he had already had a success, he too was to go to an address at two o’clock. We repaired to a restaurant.
Strange, the memories that exist for me from those days. The cities of the Campagnia seemed grey, dank, the streets permanently wet or muddy, the Italians looked drab. A sort of melancholia lay over the land. It didn’t affect me, as I was by nature hyperthyroid and mindlessly happy, but I remember those atmospheres as though it were but yesterday.
Meantime Back at the Farm!
We hear tales of Mussolini holding out in Northern Italy.
“Wot can he do?” says Gunner White. “I mean he’s what…sixty? He’s screwing this bird, wot’s ‘er name, Clara Petacci, he’s got a few Iti ‘erberts in black shirts on two-stroke motor bikes waving daggers on parades outside ruined Roman arches, wot’s he think it’s going to lead to? Hitler must have been off his nut to have him rescued.”
“Well,” said Arthur Tume philosophically, “Musso might ‘ave owed him money.”
There was a long pause, and then the surprised voice of Jack Shapiro chimes in.
“‘Ere…I never thought of Hitler ‘avin’ money…I mean…does he ever have to go into a shop and say ‘Ten Woodbines, and have you got change of a quid, and can I have a few shillings for the gas meter?’”
White says, “He has to ‘ave his barnet cut, and the barber can’t do it for nothin’…someone has to shack out for Hitler’s haircuts.”
“The German people pay for it,” said Bombardier Deans.
“The German people???” Edgington laughed. “Haircuts only cost a couple of bob, how do you divide two bob between ninety-five million Krauts.”
“They don’t,” continued Deans. “They take it in turns to pay.”
“I wonder who’s turn it is this week,” said White.
“They never know,” said Shapiro. “It’s a reign of terror, they never know who’s next to pay for Hitler’s haircut.” Here he stood and dramatised. “Suddenly, in the middle of the night, boom, boom, there’s a knock on the door…and that’s yer lot…the haircut payment squad are there.”
“I suppose all the Jews left in Germany pray for Hitler to go bald then,” said Milligan.
At two o’clock, we arrived at a house. Lt. Walker straightened his hat, and the reason why was soon revealed. A very pretty girl answered the door; from the truck I heard him speak in broken (broken? Shattered) Italian, he was full of smarmy smiling and head wagging, pulling out all the stops. Concluding, she bid him farewell and he lingered till the last view of her was obscured by the door.
“Very interesting, sir,” I said as he returned. “But—the piano.”
“Ah yes…the piano…we—er—have to collect that tomorrow,” he said, looking dreamily ahead…the dirty little devil.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1943
MY DIARY:
THE PAGE IS BLANK.
Why? Who knows? I usually made up my diary last thing at night, and I am almost sure what stopped me entering in it was an outbreak of Drooling my Spike Deans. I remember, it was late at night, we were in the garage billet, we had got our brazier going, two in fact, and several of us were seated around them, drinking our own brew-ups, and smoking.
Letter of the Day
Some of the lads were already in bed, among the leaders was Gunner White. He was sitting up, smoking a dog-end and clutching a brown mug. The calm was broken by the entrance of L/Bombardier Deans, Jam-Jar Griffin and a few more piss artists.
“Watch this,” said Deans, removed his hat and very carefully aimed it at a distant point, then threw it; it landed anywhere, so we all wondered what we had watched it for.
“What were you aiming at, cunt?” said White.
“I was not aiming it at anything,” said Deans, “it was just a display of joie de vivre.”
“Joie de fuckin’ vivre?” said White. “What’s that?”
“Means, my dearest heart, joy of living.”
“There’s no fuckin’ joy in livin’,” was the immediate reply. Deans sat at the foot of White’s bed.
“Darling,” he said, “have you missed me?”…then grabbing White