Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [99]
“You’ve got to be packed and ready to leave at 0530 hours.”
Christ. Breakfast at 4.30. Bloody hell!! Why don’t they make sleeping a crime and have done with it?
“I suggest we sleep with our eyes open,” I said.
“Shut up, Milligan,” says Fuller.
He tucks his papers back into his pocket. He tells us we have to prepare our trucks and load them ‘tonight’. We swearingly drag ourselves from our beds. The rain outside is torrential, and into it we go. We have to test the batteries for the wireless set, then test the set, pack all the Command Post equipment. Who invented bloody artillery boards??? What idiot invented drums of cable, what fool made deadweight telephone exchanges, that had twenty subscribers and also subscribed to double rupture? Like drowned rats we humped all this stuff into the wireless truck, and you HAD to pack it very carefully or you couldn’t get in yourself. My companion in the back was to be Gunner Birch, who had Space Cancer—with a minimum amount of possessions he could fill a room. Every flat surface for a hundred feet around was covered, every chair, table, box, floor, shelf, hook, nail he managed to cover with a mess of possessions, and me, I would make space by careful packing. In would come this lumbering idiot and fill every bit of that. Even then his pockets bulged with stuff he could find no room in his kit for. Underpants and vests poked out of his pockets, vests he could find no space for he wore, his gas mask was full of socks and handkerchiefs. He was a walking disaster, and worse, he was walking with me. As fast as I packed something in place he would throw something on top. By eleven I told him: “Look, go away, lie down, stay away, don’t come back and I’ll do it all.”
He walks squelching back to his bed. By midnight I had unpacked the truck and repacked it, making a mental note to get into my seat next morning before he managed to pile it with his rubbish. I returned to the shed, and was delighted to see that someone had lit a brazier that glowed lovely and red in the dark.
“Finished?” It was Spike Deans speaking.
“Yes, I’m finished,” I said, warming myself by the fire.
I took off my soaking boots and socks, and changed into dry clothes, leaving my wet ones to dry in the heat. Deans looms from the dark with a cup of hot tea. “God bless you, sir,” I said, “God bless you.”
“Just made it before you came in, there’s a whole tin of it still hot.”
“Good luck, sir,” I said.
I wearily slid into bed and sipped the tea. It was quiet now. Better get some sleep. I drained the tea, rolled myself into my blankets, got really comfortable—warm—cosy—drowsy—had to get up for a slash! As I lay there the others came dripping in at various intervals. Little Vic Nash is swearing enough for a Company of drunken Scots Guards. “Fuck ‘em,” he says, “fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-em,” and I think that about summed it all up. I fell asleep to his gentle swearing.
4.20 AM.!
Please God, why didn’t you take me in my sleep! Pitch-black cold, and a howling gale. As I dress I hear a tree crashing down, why couldn’t it fall on me?, some distant shouts; it all sounds like we’re on the moon. Breakfast helped. The duty cook, Ronnie May, served it up like a zombie, then went back to bed. At 5.30 sharp our small convoy moved out. The destination was a place called Lauro. In the back of the wireless truck, by the light of the operation lamp, I found the place on the map, a small village on the foothills that ran down to the Garigliano plains. Across the brown Garigliano were towering mountains—in these Jerry was waiting, among them a Jerry who was going to do for me. Slitheringly, we pressed forward on our muddy narrow road. First light was eeking through overcast skies; the wind was at gale force, coming from the south-west; we could feel the truck take the impact as strong gusts hit us broadside. Behind us was a three-tonner with the digging party. Stark winter-black trees lined our route in inordinate patterns. The road was deserted except for a gradual increase of military traffic going the other way.