Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [59]
The accumulation of Eighth Army Units went on until the 3rd of May. A new officer has arrived to replace Tony Goldsmith, one Lt Walker, dubbed ‘Johnny’, blonde, blue-eyed, a cavalry moustache, 5 foot 8 inches, quiet, funny—i.e. Laying on a hill in the dark at a dodgy O.P. I heard him draw his Colt Automatic and put a round in the breech. “What’s that for?” I whispered. “Academic reasons, Milligan.” he said. Away from his Bivvy, he left a notice—“This is a forward office for a Dewar’s Whisky Agent, who is authorised to taste any whisky to verify that it is of the required standard. For this service—there is no charge.”
General Montgomery about to start the battle for Tunis
The arrival of hot weather brought an issue of Khaki Drill. The sight of white knobbly legs plus voluminous shorts brought forth howls of laughter. We looked like ENS A comics trying to look funny.
“What are you writing inside your trousers?” said Edging-ton.
“It says, ‘these shorts must never be worn in sight of the Enemy…’.”
The sun never sets on the British Empire—with these shorts it would never set on their knees either.
“Bloody mosquitoes! I thought they’d all been killed by the British Army in India,” said heavily bitten Smudger Smith. Indeed they hadn’t. Fortunately we were taking anti-malarial Mepacrin tablets three times a day, with unfortunate results, for some gunners turned yellow. Gunner Woods went to sleep an Anglo Saxon and woke up a Chinaman.
“Oh, look, chop-chop,” I said. “You fightee Jelly Soldier disgluised as Chinky Poo.” Poor Woods, a simple man, went into a depression. “It’ll wear off,” I consoled. “It won’t, I been trying to wash it orf all morning, I rubbed the skin orf and it’s still yeller underneath.”
“What you need,” said Lt Joe Mostyn, “is a solicitor. In your condition you could sue the British Army for altering your nationality without your permission.” Fortunately for the Chinese race the effect of Mepacrin wore off after a week.
Terrible effect of Mepacrin on Gunner Woods
It was about this time that I saw something that I felt might put years on the war. It was a short Gunner, wearing iron frame spectacles, a steel helmet that obscured the top of his head, and baggy shorts that looked like a Tea Clipper under full sail. He was walking along a gulley behind a group of officers, heaped with their equipment. It was my first sight of Gunner Secombe; what a pity! We were so near to Victory and this had to happen. I hadn’t crossed myself in years, and I remember saying, “Please God…put him out of his misery.”
I never dreamed, one day he, I, and a lone RAF erk called Sellers, at that moment in Ceylon imagining he could hear tigers, would make a sort of comic history, not that we were not making it now; oh no—every day was lunatic. What can you say when Gunners taking mobile showers get a sudden call to action? Imagine the result—the sight of a gun team in action, naked, in tin hats and boots, all save Bombardier Morton who holds his tin hat afront of that part which only his “loved one should see.” As I stood there I thought “My God, what havoc one determined German could wreak on this lot with a feather duster.”
“You lot, Ammunition ↓ Fatty gues.” says Sgt Dawson with all his hate glands going.
≡ Fatigues.
“Not me sarge,” I said, “I’m a Catholic—today’s Ash Wednesday, a day of obligation.”
“Today’s Thursday.”
Have you ever tried off-loading 200-lb. shells for three hours on Ash Thursday? The effect on my back was more devastating than twenty minutes with Louise of Bexhill. At the O.P. Lt Walker and Bombardier Deans were