Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [12]
“Where’d you get that accent Ronnie?” asked Gunner Devine.
“Eton old sausage.”
“Well I’d stop eatin’ old sausages,” says Devine.
With a flick of the wrist, May sent a spoonful of Porridge into Devine’s eye. “Good for night blindness,” he says ducking a mug of tea.
From Setif the road to the front ran fairly straight. During a halt, along comes a pregnant American staff car that gave birth to an American called Eisenhower. The driver was a tall girl with a Veronica Lake hair-do. Eisenhower approached and spoke to,—I can’t remember who,—but I recall him saying “What kind of cannons are these?” (Cannons!? CANNONS!? That’s like calling the H.M.S. Ark Royal a boat.) Eisenhower got back in the car, struck his head on the roof, said “Oh Fuck.” and left. He had shaken hands with Sergeant Mick Ryan who didn’t know who he was. Ryan! Oh what a ruffian that man was! One night, back at Bexhill, he made for the fish and chip shop, as he reached the door the proprietor closed it.
“Sorry,” said the proprietor, “we’re closed.”
“No, you’re bloody not,” said Ryan, punched through the glass door and laid him out.
18.00 hours o’clock: Observed squadron of Boston bombers flying very high headed towards the front. These days the sound of any plane made one jumpy. Since leaving Camp trucks and lorries had passed us taking mail etc. and supplies up front. This day a truck had arrived with our MAIL! “Gunner Milligan?” shouted Bombardier Marsden. I ran fifty yards to him—“Yes Bom ?”
“No mail for you!” he told me gleefully. Bastard! I was shattered. What were all those women I had been sleeping with back home doing ? I mean, now I’d gone, they’d have time on their hands! But worst there was no mail from Lily or Louise. First Lily!
(MILLIGAN TELLS ALL. HIS LOVES, HIS DESIRES, HIS SECRET SEXUAL CODES, HIS OWN RECEIPT↓ FOR APHRODISIACS, TAKE SIX HUNDRED OYSTERS AND PORRIDGE…AND READ IT ALL IN THE SUN!)
≡ YES—A RECEIPT NOT A RECIPE. You see I made the stuff, but I always got a signature for it.
It was 1936. I was aged seventeen, smothered in pimples, even my suit had them. I worked in S. Strakers of Queen Victoria Street. My pay was 13s a week. After the train fare from Honor Oak Park to London Bridge it left 75 and 6,000 pimples. Standing on Platform One of an evening, waiting for the six fifteen, a small crowd of casual acquaintances would congregate. London Bridge Station, grim, grey, like a mighty iron mangle that squeezed people through its rollers into compartments. Yet, I fell in love there, (Third Class) Lily! She was about five foot six. Delightfully shaped, dark hair, brown doe-like eyes, a funny nose and slim legs. But I wasn’t interested. I was after a girl with green eyes and red hair with fat legs who wore an imitation leopard skin coat, but! Lily fancied me, she made it a point, like General Sherman, of being there “firstust with the mostest.” The first time we met I was running along the platform to get a seat up front, in comes Lily, I say “Take my seat.”
“No,” she smiles, “I’ll sit on your lap.” She did, very disturbing for a young man brought up on curry, Cod Liver Oil and Keplers Malt. The relationship developed rapidly, and so did I. We fell madly in love. She wanted to get married, on 13s a week I couldn’t. 13 shillings? We’d have to spend our honeymoon on a tram. Marriage? I was so innocent I had no idea how the sex act was performed. When a bloke said ‘You get across a woman’ I thought you laid on the woman crosswise making a Crucifix. I was seventeen, stupid, and a Roman Catholic. Any Questions? I had to learn the hard way—Braille! Of course I wanted sex. God! how clumsy I must have been. Finally after three years being fed up with waiting, she went off with some red headed twit called ‘Roddy’. As far as she was concerned it was over. Not for me. Brought up on silent films with a romantic Irish father who told me I was descended from the