Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [15]
“Don’t let him get hold of it mate,” says Edge, “or he’ll beat the shit out of you.”
All eyes aloft. Two more squadrons of Boston Bombers appeared, the engines groaning under the weight of bombs. How clean it all looked up there. By sundown we were all pissed off doing nothing. Officers tried to occupy us with things like “Do that top button up.” They were then hard put to it to think of something to do next, they settled for “Undo that top button.”
“What’s the time?” says Gunner Chalky White.
“You want to know the time?”
“I thought it would be exciting.”
“All right,” I said, “it’s 5.24.”
“Can I hear it again?”
“I’m sorry it’s gone—but I can let you have 5.25.”
“Oh no,” he shook his head sadly, “I like the old times better.” I wrote a few letters. The one to Louise made me so hot I had to lie down in the shade. I tell you Bromide was useless!!!
MILLIGAN:
Hellow Huston Control! descending for soft landing on Louise.
BASE:
What’s it look like?
MILLIGAN:
Arrrgggh Knickers! Knockers!
“Char?” says Edgington handing me a mug of tea.
“You have interrupted my midday erotic fantasy!”
“Yes, I smelt burning hairs, and I was afeared for your trousers.” I sipped the tea. “How’s the journey in M Truck?”
“Bloody murder! Seats are wood, only trouble my arse isn’t.”
“I miss not being able to play with the band,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, “at least you can have a blow on yer bugle, me, where do you get a piano in lovely flyblown Le Kef?”
“Report sick, tell ‘em you are suffering from Piano withdrawal.”
“He’ll only give me one in tablet form.”
“Then it could open up the music world! And now! Franz Edgington, wearing a hedgehog skin loin cloth, will play Grieg’s A Minor on an upright Tablet and scream.”
It was 5.20 p.m. At this time in civvy street I’d have been breaking my soul in the dull lit boredom at a wooden table in the Woolwich Arsenal Dockyard. Mr Rose the foreman would be saying “You call this a day’s work Milligan?” And I’d say “Yes.” About now, they’d all be thinking of 5.30 and tucking their little thermos flasks in little cardboard briefcases and folding up the greaseproof paper for the morrow. Even if I got killed, it was better than that. Of course, if I got killed I might change my mind.
“Eggs again?” said Chalky White. “We’ll all be egg bound soon. There’s no happy in between. Back at X Camp we all had the runs, now we’re all bound up like bloody concrete.”
“True, I suppose the moment we get into action we’ll all have the shits again,” I said.
“I wonder what it’s like.”
“The shits?”
“No…action.”
“We’ll soon know all about it.”
“They say it’s very noisy.”
“Action?”
“No, the shits.”
It was night now—distant flashes of gunfire lit the sky. Men sat in groups, talking, laughing, then, one by one, crawled into the pit. In the dark, cigarette ends glowed like fireflies. Somewhere, a long way off, a goat bleated, and a lot of good it did him. While we slept the First Army was having a bloody conflict establishing the character of the campaign. In the mountains, there was no scope for dashing armoured division pursuits on the flat as the Eighth Army had enjoyed. This was an arduous vicious slogging match of small groups of Infantry charging up hill tops at bayonet point. And on this particular night all hell was being let loose in the Kasserine Pass with Rommel at his cavalier best destroying the American opposition.
16 Feb. 1943
Battery Diary:
…Battery Commander, and Gun Position Officer to El Aroussa via Le Kef to report to C.R.A. 6th Armoured Div. Battery to move to hide west of Gafour.
“Why do they keep hidin’ us,” says Chalky. “I’m not ashamed of being a Gunner.”
We bade farewell to lovely shit-laden Le Kef and set off in our little Khaki Noddy Cars.
A sign ‘Dust means death’, Shepherd commented. “Aye, if ye get too much in yer lungs it kills ye,” he says. We passed camouflaged ammo dumps, rear Echelon vehicles, tents, bivvys etc. Crossing the road ahead were what would seem like bundles of rags on legs, carrying rifles and gas stoves.
“They’re Goums,” said Lt Budden.