Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [43]
The rest of the day was a bore save for sudden rushes to hide from ME log’s and periodic visits to watch the Battle. We dined well on hot stew brought in vacuum containers. By sunset the battle had left us behind, we packed up and returned to Munchar.
A gunner piddling against the gunwheel watched his comrades
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Divertissement Sept. 1973
As I sit in a suite on the 13th Floor of the Euro-building in Madrid, writing this volume, I reflect on that time 30 years ago, and the emotional analysis of those khaki days, have left such a deeply etched impression, that the whole spectrum actually re-inhabits my being with such remarkable freshness that the weight of the nostalgia is almost too much to bear, feelings that I had incurred in those days, towards people, incidents, nature, which I thought of as almost trivial, were really Of Titanic proportions, and ones, that I now realize were to stay fresh, and become more poignant as the years passed, and the desire to experience them all once again, be they good, bad or indifferent, became a haunting spectre that suddenly, during the course of a day, takes you unawares, a particular word, a scent, a colour, or song could trigger it off. It could be at, say, Ronnie Scott’s Club with a companion. Without warning someone plays a tune, and immediately, the surroundings and the companion become total strangers, and you long for those yester-ghosts to snatch you and rush you back to that magic day it happened. I used to scoff at my father’s looking forward to his annual World War I reunions, but now I know, you have to have them! In fact I was instrumental in getting our own D Battery reunions started, and lo and behold, the attendance increases every year.
Despite the friendships I have made since the war, it is always those early ones that have weight, understanding, confidence and mutual experience that I cling to. Though my best friend Harry Edgington has emigrated to New Zealand, we are closer than ever, I know that a particular tune will automatically make him think of the time we played it together, and the same applies to me. Our correspondence is prodigious, his letters fill 3 Boxfiles, likewise recorded tapes, in which he sends his latest compositions, asking my opinions. He sends me tapes that send me into gales of laughter and yet all these occasions are not really happy, and yet I welcome them, they give a most soul warming effect, it savours of satisfaction, and yet is emotionally inconclusive, it has become, like cocaine, addictive. Is it because with the future unknown, the present traumatic, that we find the past so secure?
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April 8 1943: This way to another battle
At Sunset we drove to a rendezvous with Captain Rand, Bdr Edwards, Gunner Maunders in a Bren driven by Bdr Sherwood, it was dark when we met, “We’ll sleep here tonight,” said diminutive Captain Rand in a voice like Minnie Mouse. We slept fitfully by the roadside as trucks, tanks, etc. rumbled back and forth but inches from our heads.
April 8 1943: Djbel Mahdi
Up at first light, drove in the wake of a hurried Jerry retreat along the floor of a hot dust-choked valley, we passed still burning vehicles—some ours, some theirs. A few carbonised bodies—‘brew ups’ as Tank men called it. We stopped to pin-point our position, to my left, lying face down was the body of an Italian not long dead, the blood on his neck still oozing, lovingly, I removed his watch.↓ The Bren stopped at the foot of Djbel Mahdi.
≡ I gave it to my father, and it’s still in my mother’s possession.
The 2/4 Hamps were still digging in when we arrived. I followed Capt. Rand and Bdr Edwards uphill, unreeling the remote control from the wireless. Fuck! it didn’t reach. Rand and Edwards dropped on their bellies just below the crest. I had to run back, fix them a telephone