Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [24]
Tea finished, I started to crawl back.
“Thank mother for the rabbit, Milligan,” said Goldsmith.
Back at the Carrier they were playing pontoon. I arrived as Sherwood had lost his Bren Carrier on a five card trick.
“Want to play?” said Hart.
“OK.”
“He’s got twenty francs,” Shapiro was quick to say.
The game reached an alarming level, I had bet my own mother and three francs on two picture cards. I made thirty francs on the day and, on paper, I still own Sherwoods fruit-shop in Reading.
“That’s me finished,” said Sherwood. “Who’s got a fag?”
“Shapiro,” I said quickly—WHOOSHHHHHBANG! WHOSSSHBANG!…88’s! “See?” I said, “They know you’re Jewish.” Ten more rounds.
“I’m not that bloody Jewish,” says Shapiro face down.
Next a round of marker smoke. It was a guide for a bombing raid—twelve Stukas roared down, the noise of their engines was incredible—like howling wolves; above them, circling, were ME logs. The Stukas dropped their eggs on the London Irish, the noise was frightening, the earth shook as bombs exploded and the sky shook as the Bofors hammered away. When the last bomb had dropped the Gunners Shapiro and Milligan, Pontoon Players Extraordinary, shot out from under the camouflage net and ran heroically to a nullah. We sat gasping, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
“We didn’t say goodbye,” I said. We bent over the stream and splashed water over our faces.
Some of the London Irish had copped it, we saw three stretchers loaded on to a Bren and driven away. Hooking on our small arms we trudged back across the dusty plain. A motorcycle was coming towards us. It was a young paratrooper.
“You know where the London Irish are?” he asked.
“Yes, so do the bloody Luftwaffe,” I pointed. “They’re spread along the rear slope of that hill.”
“Ta,” he said. “What mob are you?”
“Gunners. You Paras?”
“Yes.”
“You were in the first lot out here?”
“Yer. What a scramble, they dropped us on Bone, and the bloody Arabs were waiting to buy our ‘chutes as we landed, we had to fight ‘em to make ‘em let go.” He laughed, revved the engine, and roared away.
“He might have been a German spy,” said Shapiro, who’d remained strangely silent during the conversation.
“Don’t be bloody daft Shap, he was too scruffy to be a Kraut.”
“He asked questions didn’t he? You told him what mob we were.”
“I didn’t, all I said was we were gunners, not the name of the Regiment.”
“Oh.”
“You can take your finger off the trigger now.”
“I was just playing safe. He could have been a German.”
“OK it was a German, I never let on you were Jewish.”
“Oh thank you, thank you very much, that’s big, you didn’t tell him I was Jewish, what you want, a receipt for it or something?” When we got back the guns were firing.
“They’re busy,” I shouted to Shapiro.
“It’s pay day,” he said.
I sat on my bed enjoying the evening meal, steak and kidney pudding. This really was a good life if you didn’t want to think more than ten minutes ahead. We got money, grub, clothes, transport, travel, everything bar women, and we could dream of them at night. Some just thought of one woman, I thought of as many as I could. I don’t suppose they knew, but I had Deanna Durbin and Joan Blondell every night until the fall of Tunis, if I had a good dinner I used to include Mae West. Other lads were smoking, fiddling with kit, sewing buttons, chatting or talking to the wall. I closed my eyes. It was time I had some letters! Wonder what Lily was doing. I knew what Louise would be doing! AHHHHHHHHHHRGGGG! Louise was the girl with big boobs and buttocks that had serviced me twice a week. Ahrggg!!! Someone was shaking me—it was me. No, someone else was shaking me! It was him!
The sentry, “Stand to.”
Four o’clock already? Somewhere someone was removing the hours between sunset and sunrise, that or they were bringing four in the morning forward to eight at night. It was chilly. Silent. Again, I stood in a hole in the ground.
On duty in a hole in