Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [57]
“What are you ill with?”
“Penicillin poisoning, mam.”
“You brave boy. Your parents must be so proud of you.”
“No, they think I’m a silly bugger.”
She smiled. She was deaf. The ground temperature was 100° as she gave me a woollen pullover, scarf and gloves. “It gets very chilly in the evenings,” she added. A kind old dear, but the wrong kind, I think her name was Trowler, she was about a hundred and sixty, and always carried a shovel. There was one magnificent nurse, Sheila Frances. She had red hair, deep blue eyes and was very pretty, but that didn’t matter! because! she had big tits. Everyone was after her, and I didn’t think I had a chance, but, she fancied me. I got lots of extra, like helping me get her knickers off in her tent and she eased my pain no end. It was all very nice but had to end, one morning I was loaded on to a truck driven back to the regiment for a well-deserved rest. Every night after that I would face in the direction of the hospital, take all my clothes off and howl.
A prematurely aged L/Bdr Milligan being told by the M.O. he must stop screwing Nurse Sheila Frances or go blind
Trauma
I couldn’t move. Something terrible was about to happen. Something so awful, that only in dreams would it be concerned, and yet it was about to become a reality, a German 115 mm shell was in orbit, and on a collision course with my body, it was going to explode when it touched my groin, my bowels were going to be blown out of my back, yet I would still be alive long enough to turn and see my entrails traced out fan-like from my stomach, I would hear a high-pitched scream, it was my mother, she was standing in the front room—and I lay on the carpet, outrageously mutilated.
April 27th
Battery Diary:
Lt Goldsmith buried on LONGSTOP.
April 30th
My Diary:
Back from Hospital and recovering from sexual coma. Early duty in Command Post. Duty Officer Lt Beauman-Smythe.
The Battery was heavily engaged in Counter Battery Fire, we silenced German 88s at Montresier and again at Djbel Bou.
“Why must we always drop bleedin’ great shells on ‘em to shut ‘em up.” This is L/Bdr Milligan addressing the Command Post.
“Well what do you suggest?”
“We could write to them, and say ‘you are causing a disturbance, please keep quiet, otherwise we will drop heavy explosive things on you’.”
“Look,” says Signaller Birch, “the Germans are thick, thick, thick, if you belt a Kraut over the nut with a sledge hammer you have to tell ‘im to fall down.”
“Give me a cigarette, and I will agree with you.”
“Gord, you still scrounging fags, how many do you smoke a day?”
“As many as I can cadge, in civvy street I smoked sixty a day.”
“That’s too many mate.”
“Yes, it was too many, but some days, it was just right.”
“They’ll kill you in time.”
“Something kills everybody in time, take my grandmother, she died of deafness.”
“Died of Deafness?”
“Yes, there was this steamroller coming up behind her and she didn’t hear it.”
“She didn’t die of deafness…she died of steamroller.”
So the dialogue went on between fire orders. Then at midday, we were in the middle of a counter battery shoot against enemy Guns at Djbel Guessa when we heard what I thought was an unusually loud explosion from one of our guns. I failed to get any acknowledgement of fire orders from A Subsection. “A Sub are you hearing me…”
Something had gone wrong, then a startled voice came through my headphones. “Command Post, we’ve been hit,” a gasp and then silence. We all started to run to the guns, which were about thirty yards away screened from us by a small feature in the hill. What we saw was terrible, the entire crew of A Sub section lay dead, dying and wounded around their gun. At first we all thought it was a direct hit by Jerry, but it was an even bitterer pill to swallow. B Sub Gun in the lee of A Sub had fired and their shell had prematurely exploded as it was level with A Sub Gun causing havoc. Lance Bombardier