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By Root 106 0

Kings of Connaught, I played out the scene of the rejected lover. Sitting on a bench in Ladywell Recreation Ground, with a quarter of jelly babies, I would slump in the corner of the benches in a series of ‘scorned attitudes’ hoping she would come looking for me, like James Cagney in Shanghai Lil. I would do anything up to twenty-seven dejected poses a night, before the Park Keeper threw me out. What I needed was consolation. All my mother gave me was Weetabix. Playing local dances, I would buy ginger ale, disguise it in a whisky glass hoping she would see me taking gulps in between trumpet solos, pretending I was drunk. I was now Robert Taylor. I would play sobbing trumpet choruses until even the Jews would shout “Stop! Enough is enough.” I would wait at night on the opposite side to her house, with my Marks and Spencer’s mackintosh (5s 3d in a sale) coat collar up, making sure when she came home with the new boyfriend, I would be standing under the gas lamp, smoking a cigarette. When they arrived, I would throw down the cigarette, stamp on it, place my hands in my pockets then walk away whistling Bing Crosby’s ‘The Thrill is Gone’. I did that every night of December. I got pneumonia. Just what I wanted! I wrote and told her I was dying! She sent me a get well card. I thought, one evening I would throw myself from the bandstand and crash at the feet of her and her partner. Before I could, she moved her dancing habitat elsewhere. On the night I planned it, I sat sweating, finally I had to go to the Gents and remove the padding stuffed up the front of my shirt to take the shock of the fall.

She met someone with a car, I used to give chase, shouting threats. After a year of this I’d had the shoes resoled fifty times, chased the car 1,073 miles, lost hope and had calves like Nureyev, but, I imagined, like Camille, she would return one winter’s night to die in my arms at 50 Riseldine Road, Brockley Rise, S.E.26. I’d offer her Champagne (Ovaltine), she would ask me to play ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ on my trumpet and then die. It didn’t happen. And not only did it not happen, here I was by the roadside of some bloody wog village in Africa and she hadn’t even bothered to write to me. But chum! Living in hope is no reason to go without. I mean, what’s wrong with part-time love affairs which included night occupations from the waist down? I mean, I had to keep fit. To this end I let other women into my life. I was good looking so I went in at the deep end.

There was lovely Junoesque Ivy, her sister Magda, then s her married sister, Eileen! Ivy had taught me how, and from then on there was no stopping me. I had to go on to vitamin pills. There was Dot on One Tree Hill, Brockley Doris who was to get married on the morrow, Deptford Flo, Miss MacCafferty of Lewisham Hospital. Once in uniform I ran into a spate of affairs. Oh Louise! Louise! Louise!

So no mail. “Cheer up,” said Gunner Forester, “You can read my letter, my wife’s pissed off with a Polish Pilot.”

“With eyesight like that, how did he become a pilot?” I said.

Hitlergram No. 27

ADOLPH HITLER:

You realize soon zer Englishers people will be crushed!

ME:

It must be rush hour.

ADOLPH HITLER:

Zere is no need to rush!! Soon it will all be over.

ME:

Hooray! back to Civvy Street.

ADOLPH:

Civvy Street is no more! It was destroyed by zer bombs of mine Luftwaffe.

We were pressing on down the dusty road towards Souk Arras a hundred miles from the front. At Oued Athmenia, we got into a secondary road. We were on a high plateau, the sun overhead, the endless jolting finally made you numb. At the next break Driver Shepherd took over. Budden emerged from behind a tree, shaking off the drips. “Right Milligan, off we go.”

“I’m not Milligan sir,” said Shepherd, in a hurt voice.

“Oh it’s you Shepherd, good!”

Voice from back of truck. “It’s the Good Shepherd sir.”

19 Battery was now to part from the main body of the Regiment. They went to spend the night at Guelma (the dirty swines) while we, the lilywhite boys, went on half the distance again, into a night bivouac outside Souk