Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [32]
The M.O. gave us all some foul tasting pills that left you feeling like you’d slept with an Arab’s toe in your mouth. After a few days it all cleared up, but during the attack Bombardier Marsden ran a sweepstake, BSM McArthur swept the pool with twenty-four visits in eight hours, he got two hundred francs, and a sore arse.
A three man latrine with two men in support
28 Feb. 1943
My Diary:
Torrential rain. Wireless trench flooded.
Contacted Gun Position:
Milligan:
Hello! Tell Sergeant Dawson I need a relief.
Gun Position:
Who do you want?
Milligan:
Paulette Goddard.
Gun Position:
What will be her duties?
Milligan:
Me.
The rain! Not only did it come down, it went up 6 feet, and then came down a second time.
“It’s good for the crops,” said McArthur.
“I haven’t got any,” I said.
“I have. I’ve got a hundred acres in Somerset and three hundred in Canada.”
“It’s not raining there.”
“I know,” he said, pacing up and down, “and it’s very very worrying.”
B.S.M. McArthur telling a gunner he owns all the mud in Tunisia
MARCH
Germans launched an offensive called ‘Ocksenkopf’.↓
≡ ‘Ox Head’. With names like that for a major offensive, they just couldn’t have had a sense of humour.
It went from 26 February to 5 March. They nearly broke through at Hunt’s Gap, but an incredible resistance by 5 Hampshires and 155 Bty R A for over twelve hours (the latter were finally overwhelmed), decimated the Bosch so much—he had to stop.
March 13 1943
Early closing in Lewisham.
US BULLETIN
The scene:
A highly camouflaged American Ice-cream refrigerator in the battle zone. A phone rings.
EISENHOWER:
Who is that?
VOICE:
I’m General Patton, 2nd in line to John Wayne…
EISENHOWER:
It’s Ike here? We’ve taken a thrashing from the Germans at Kasserine.
PATTON:
Germans? I’ll put them on the list, but first we get rid of the Limeys!
EISENHOWER:
Remember, form the Tanks into a circle—with women and kids in the middle.
12 March 1943
Q, Bloke, Courtney says: “We’ve got to move to a place called ‘Beja’.” Soooo, we all start this bloody kit packing again. Finally the convoy lined up. BSM McArthur on his motorbike. “Where’s the Rolls?” I said. It was 44 miles to Beja, en route we passed a glut of POW’s; without fail, we gave them Nazi salutes and morale sapping raspberries. The Germans looked baffled. Was this rabble the Army they were fighting? And what was this strange farting noise they made?
Goebbels News Flash
HITLER:
Vat is dis fartung noise zer Britisher are making ?
HIMMLER:
Einer Raspberry-speilen.
HITLER:
Raspberry-speilen?—vat is das?
HIMMLER:
According to our secret agent it is einen fartung noise.
HITLER:
How can einen Raspberry make zer fartung noise?
HIMMLER:
It is einen mystery?
HITLER:
Zat is not good enough! We must form Einer Raspberry-speil Panzer Unit. We will show zem who is master of zer Fartung noise.
Gunner Milligan showing his unflagging belief in his King and Country
A mile outside Beja, on the verge of a tree lined dusty road, we parked our vehicles, draped scrim nets over them. Flanking us were fields of ripening corn that rittle-rattled in the afternoon breeze. The afternoon was good drying weather; I had to wash my denims and battle-dress trousers because they pleaded with me to. I hung them to dry, and repaired in my shirt and socks to sleep in Kidgell’s lorry. I awoke to find the lorry a mile away at an Ordnance Depot about to be loaded with blankets. I was hoiked out of the back accompanied by wolf whistles from soldiers.
An RSM spotted me. “Oi! Yew, ‘ere, and double!” It was a rare sight, me running across a busy square. I came to an unclassic attention.
“Wot the bloody ‘ell you think you’re doing?”
“It was an accident sir.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Dysentery sir—I’m excused trousers during an attack.”
“If the Arabs sees you they’ll think we’re all bloody queer.” He took me to the Quarter Master’s Store. “Fix this nudist up with trousers.”
Kidgell was bent double with laughter as we drove back. “You swine, Kidgell, I hope on your