Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [97]
“Oh Mummy,” he suddenly says, “I don’t want to go back to school.”
A much decorated officer
DECEMBER 30, 1943
DIARY:
GOT PISSED ALL DAY.
As requested I went back to the girl the next night, she was delighted and screwed me again. As I dressed I awaited my rightful payment.
“That will be a thousand lire,” she said.
The woman was nothing but a common whore. If she weren’t careful I’d become a practising Catholic again.
DECEMBER 31, 1943
WE LEAVE AMALFI
“All good things must come to an end.” So saying, I slammed the tailboard up, climbed aboard, and we commenced our journey along the muddy Route 6, back to the farm. Ah Amalfi! Ravello! what terrible withdrawal symptoms is produced. We arrived back just after dark, the Sentry challenges us.
“Halt, who goes there?”
We give an incredible mixture of replies. I said, “Hiawatha and Co. Limited,” I think Edgington said, “W. C. Fields, my deeer.”
White dumps his big pack on the deck, flops on to his bed, lights a fag: “Comin’ back to this fooking place—it’s like being taken to the ballet then asked to empty the dustbins.”
Harry starts to sing ‘Cuore Napolitano’, a song we had heard in Amalfi. It had all been memorable.
JANUARY 1-2, 1944
A muddy field, a rectangular pitch, at each end goals made from a bric-a-brac of telegraph poles, logs and branches of trees fresh-painted with whitewash. Around the touchlines are foregathered men of 19 Battery, they have come to see 19 Battery ‘wipe the bloody floor’ with a team from RHQ. “We’ll teach ‘em to live in dry bloody billets,” said Dai Poole as he took the field to captain our team. Great cries of encouragement, as against the boos that greet RHQ. The referee is Sgt. Donaldson, the two linesmen Jock Hall and Bdr. Marsden: so biased is the referee that the entry of RHQ is greeted with a blast on the whistle and a cry of “Offside.”
The game didn’t seem to bear much relationship to football. Rather mud-ball. At times it was buried a foot under the surface, and after ten minutes both sides looked identical. Thereafter all the players ran around the field identifying themselves by shouting ‘19 Battery’ or ‘RHQ’. It sounded like a lunatic Eastern bazaar. All attempts at positional play were abandoned in favour of a mass concentration of wherever the ball was. I swear to God the first goal for 19 Battery was scored by the referee, and when the ball came where the touchline might have been, several spectators joined in the dribbling. The interval was resplendent with two huge containers of tea, and a seasonal ‘gift’ of rum. The spectators were into it first, and the players got bugger all.
The game is about to be resumed, but stops when three 19 Battery players were found hiding among the RHQ team. The game ended in a 2-0 win for us. Our second goal was unique; RHQ goalie stopped a shot and was standing holding the ball on the goal-line, when Gunner Devine shoved him in. There was a hell of an argument but the goal was allowed, some say only after the referee had promised the goalie fifty lire.
That night we had news from the front, 18 Battery in a duel had blasted a Jerry gun off the face of the earth with an observed direct hit (from an Air OP), and 15 Battery had destroyed a very dangerous MG pill-box. Happy New Year!
Correct uniform for officers sleeping on duty.
JANUARY 2/3, 1944
Search for AFN Naples
I wanted to get the Band a broadcast; with this in mind I skidaddled to Naples, hitching all the way. After much searching, I finally located the offices of the Allied Forces Network. They were located on the first floor of the San Carlo Opera house. I passed along a corridor of Baroque doors. Signs—‘Cappo de Ballet’, ‘Maestro del Orchestra’, ‘Prima Ballerina’, and ‘Viatato Ingresso’. Finally a piece of true British enterprise, ‘AFN Liaison Officer’, written on a piece of cardboard with a three-inch nail through it. I knocked politely—the door was opened by a tubby ATS girl who greeted me with “Yes?”
“I’d like to speak to someone about doing a broadcast.”
“Oh yes?”