Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [81]
White squirmed uneasily. “Geroff,” he said.
Deans, still holding White’s feet through the blanket, knelt.
“Ohhhh, dearest is upset, has someone upset my dearest whose little white feet I am holding through the counter-pane?”
“Buggerorf,” giggled White.
Deans moved his hands up to White’s shins. “And whose little leggy poos are these, are they the ones my dearest has been dancing on all day on fields of daisies?”
Deans moves his hands up again to White’s thighs.
“Go on, bugger orf,” giggled White, who moved uneasily, but not enough to spill his tea, and in this, Deans knew he had White trapped. Nothing will make a gunner spill his Char, it was as predictable as the greedy monkey who couldn’t get his food-filled fist back through the bars.
“Darling has been lonely without her diddums to love her, hasn’t she?” Deans runs his hands Charles Boyer-like up the blankets on White’s thighs.
A small group of interested spectators have gathered around the scene, Deans starts to massage White’s thighs, with White himself laughing and saying, “Someone get the bugger off.”
“Bugger off? You want your darling, who brings you romance on an Italian farm, to bugger off?…Tsu, tsu, tsu,” then with a lightning move of the hand, Deans grabs White’s cobblers. A great yell from White, who tries to escape and the whole bed collapses sideways to the floor, exposing White naked from the waist down. Deans lets out a horrified gasp, and lunges forward, his quivering finger pointing at White’s Wedding Tackle.
“What’s this? Ohhhh, while I’ve been away my darling has been unfaithful to me.…”
There ended the romantic interlude.
I might say life wasn’t all gaiety and laughter. Alf Fildes’ diary of the time mentions:
Boy am I browned off with this God-forsaken army. We have been here a week and still no recreation or trip to Naples. I’ve had four hours in Naples while others have had days. Doug [Kidgell] is there with the Scammells and some chaps with the guns, lucky devils, but I suppose money won’t last long among those thieving bloody Italians, who are still charging four times the value of the goods. I’m sick and tired of this dragging war and dictatorship within this lousy tin-god ridden army. Give me peace or I’ll go mad soon. [Soon? He was late. We were already there. S.M.] And what does this army do to try and cheer us up while the Yanks live in luxury at base kidding themselves they are winning the war and sitting pretty. The whole system stinks!!!
There you have it. I wonder if Churchill knew all this?
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1943
Battery Orders: the following men have been chosen for GOS’s Parade. Santa Maria La Fosse.
Breakfast 0630 Parade 0730
Embuss 0745
Arrive 0815
Parade 0830
March Past.
Best battle dress. Lanyards will be worn. All webbing to be blancoed. Full FSMO less small and big pack. Rifles will not be carried.
As each one saw his name on the roll he gave a groan and slumped away like a broken man, the one word that destroyed, BLANCO!, it struck terror into all.
In a disbelieving voice Sergeant King reads, “Concert Party excused guard in lieu of Rehearsals!”
Morning Parade has gaps in the ranks. “It’s the Concert Party, sir,” comforts BSM Griffin.
“There’s SIXTY men missing,” says Major Jenkins. “What are they putting on…Aida?”
We have sent for Driver Kidgell in Naples. The Guns and the Scammells are at workshops being overhauled; he’s not being overhauled, no, he and his oily bloody mates are sitting on their fat arses saying ‘Phew’ as they exhaust themselves playing Pontoon, and only move for meals and selling petrol. Half of them are freezing to death as they’ve sold their blankets, some of them are already in the Mafia.
On the morning of December 22, his lordship Kidgell arrives in a stately three-tonner lorry, he’s waving from the window like Royalty and the subjects are returning it with certain signs from the waist down. He drives up to Edging-ton and I who are trying to make one cigarette do the job of twenty.
Short-arse