Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [36]
“Gis a fag or I’ll break out in running sores and make ‘em gallop all over you infesting your Bazolikons.”
“Is this the language of the race that gave us Joyce, Yeats, O’Casey, Old Mother Riley?”
Edge has contorted himself into the letter Z to pull his tin of cigarettes from his pocket. He hands me a curved flattened thing.
“Wot’s this?”
“Players Turkish for smoking round corners.”
Edgington was going through the gyrations of getting his battle-dress off, in the confined space this meant you got his elbow in your earole every second.
“Let’s face it, Edgington this is only a one man tent.”
“I am only one man.”
“But I was only one man first.”
“Lies, I am the first only one man.”
Finally we settled, doused the light, rolled left and right into our blankets. Up front the Germans had opened an attack all along the line. Here we slept to the sound of rain, it was a good arrangement.
19 March, 1943
I awoke in the wee small hours, but not for a wee, no! something was crawling on my chest, my first thought was it must be an eleven foot King Cobra, it was moving slowly down towards where women affect you most, if he bit me there, some twenty women in England would take the veil. I called very softly “Harry…Harry…Harry…” He moved and mumbled something like “It’s all right mother, I’ve known her three years.”
“Pay Parade!” I said. This got his eyes open. “Now listen! There’s something on my chest.”
“They’re called blankets.”
“I’m serious, it’s moving downwards, can you carefully take the blankets back and get it?” He lit the oil lamp, and very carefully peeled off the blankets, he gasped.
“Cor bloody hell!”
“Never mind that, what is it?”
“A black scorpion.”
“Rubbish, it’s an eleven foot King Cobra!”
“It’s a two inch scorpion. I’m going to knock it to your side.”
“What’s wrong with yours.”
With a sweeping movement he whisked the scorpion off, smashed the tent pole, collapsed the tent, extinguished the light, spilled the paraffin, and set fire to the blankets. From then on the evening lost its splendour, we stood in the pouring rain amid smouldering blankets, trying to avoid the scorpion, and to retrieve our kit. The night was spent in the gay carefree interior of Kidgell’s lorry.
“You clumsy bugger you wrecked our little love nest.”
“Thank you very much, next time you knock your own bloody scorpions off.”
“It was an eleven foot King Cobra!”
March 22
The morning of March the 22nd dawned. The rain had stopped. Sol ascended. We strung our damp gear on a makeshift clothes line.
Interior of my one man tent
“Milligan! pack your kit, you’re going up the line,” said BQMS Courtney.
“But me kit’s soaking wet!”
“Stop the war, Mr Milligan’s kit is wet.”
I massaged my steaming belongings into my kit bag, and boarded the Ration Truck with Driver Wilson. “What’s all these blood stains in the back?” I said, “It’s not the old trouble?”
“Last night, I was driving back from the Guns, I found a Don R laying by the road with his legs nearly off, a Jerry patrol had got him with a machine pistol.”
Wilson was a dour Scot, sporting pebble glasses (only the British Army would make him a driver). I think he drove in Braille. In peace time he’d been a shepherd. He rarely spoke, but sometimes in his sleep, he bleated.
“Where you taking me?”
“Munchar.”
“Munchar?”
“Munchar. It’s a bombed village.”
So it was. I was to relieve L/Bdr Wenham at the Command Post. He’d come up in strange splotches and was reporting sick. Munchar was a French Colonial Farming village now deserted. The whole village lay in the shadow of Djbel Munchar, a gigantic razor-backed rock, looking like a fossilized Dinosaur, cast by nature in grey-white granite, it reflected the colours of the day, pink at dawn, blazing white at noon, scarlet at sunset. By moonlight it looked awesome, like the hump of a colossal white killer whale, beyond it, waiting, lay the enemy.
Djbel Munchar by Edgington
I arrived about 9.30 a.m., the truck waited to take the ailing Wenham back,