Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [9]
Enough to last forty-eight hours. Wearily I climb into Bdr. Sherwood’s bren carrier, already in it and waiting are Captain Sullivan, Signaller Birch and Bombardier Edwards. In a second carrier are Lt. Budden, Sig. Wenham; I cannot recall the Driver.
MY DIARY:
GOT ON TO NARROW ROAD TO MANGO, ROAD JAMMED WITH VEHICLES, TWO TRUCKS AHEAD STRUCK BY JERRY MORTARS. STUCK FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS.
Progress is slow, road jammed with vehicles, very dark now, ahead is a glow of a large fire. Lt. Budden dismounts, he is coming towards us with a face that says Confusion Unlimited, and he appears to be the Managing Director.
“That’s the mountain there,” he points to a mountain that is so big it doesn’t need pointing to. Still I take his point. “We’ve got to get up that.”
“We need a ladder, sir.”
“How we going to get a bloody bren carrier up there?” says Birch.
“Post it.”
He tried to hit me.
“I’ll miss him.”
“Who?” says Birch.
“A helmsman whose face showed white through the wheel house.”
It’s really dark. We can hear the small arms fire. The crump of mortars is endless. What was Basenji? There is now a nose-to-tail traffic jam along a narrow walled lane; the red glow ahead is getting larger, and now owns the sky. Some walking wounded are squeezing past us on their way back.
“Wot’s happening?” I said to one of them.
“Jerry mortars, they set fire to the ammo truck—any minute now.”
He had hardly said it when there was an explosion and the random fireworks of the ammo going off showered the sky with sparks; it was great fun, and costing us a fortune. A Military Policeman is coming down the convoy.
“Back up, if you can,” he says, and laughs. We pass the message down the line, half an hour later we start to move backwards. A Despatch Rider is riding up from down behind us calling out “Any 19 Battery here?…Any 19 Battery here?…”
Birch says “Yes.”
Silly sod! Never answer anything in the Army, too late now. It’s Don R. Lawrence. He tells us we have to take the bren carrier and go back to pick up a wireless set which has just arrived from the beach, and Captain Sullivan on another truck is going to the OP, so we breathe a sigh of relief, we start extricating the bren carrier from the congestion, marvellous, when we’ve almost got it out the bloody thing breaks down, we struggle and manage to push it on to its side to allow the traffic through. Budden tells us, “We’ll have to walk to HQ and get fresh orders.”
I tell him I don’t need fresh orders, I’m perfectly satisfied with the ones I’ve got.
“Please, Milligan,” says Budden, “try and be a soldier.”
We finally reach RHQ. It’s off a walled lane in an Italian farmhouse, built around a forecourt two storeys high; an exterior staircase leads up to the first floor, which is surrounded by a balcony. The farm is blacked out except the room where our HQ is, that is a mass of light chinks coming from windows and doors like an early Son et Lumiere. Several vehicles are parked in the forecourt. The drivers are asleep in the back. Twenty minutes pass. Mr Budden appears, he smells of Whisky, the khaki after-shave for men. He is much happier.
“We are not needed, Milligan,” he says.
“Does that mean for the duration?”
We both walk back to the gun position, which is easily found. We just followed the loudest bangs.
SEPTEMBER 24, 1943
MY DIARY:
COOL NIGHT, A TOUCH OF AUTUMN CHILL IN THE AIR. HAD VERY DISTURBED SLEEP. KEPT WAKING UP IN A COLD SWEAT, TOOK SWIG AT WATER BOTTLE, HAD A FAG. WHAT A BLOODY LIFE. I FINALLY DROPPED OFF INTO A BLACK SLEEP, LIKE DEATH. AM I THE BLACK SLEEP OF THE FAMILY?
SEPTEMBER 25, 1943
I awoke at first light, sat up, yawned. I felt as tired as though I had not slept. A morning mist is rapidly disappearing. It swirls around the head of Monte Mango. I start the ritual of folding my blankets. A voice calls, “Hey, Terry.” Terry? I hadn’t been called that since I turned khaki. It was Reg Lake, a Captain in the Queen’s Regiment. He had been sleeping about thirty yards away. Reg was the pre-war manager