Rommel_ Gunner Who__ A Confrontation in - Spike Milligan [7]
We’re the boys from Battery D
Four Boys from Battery D
We make a rhythmic noise
We give you dancing joys
And sing the latest melody.
Now we make the darndest sounds
As we send you Truckin’ on down
And if it’s sweet or hot
We give it all we’ve got
And boy! we got enough to go around.
We’ll set your feet tapping with a quick step
We’ve a waltz that’ll make you sigh
And then the tempo we’ve got
For a slow fox-trop
Would make a wallflower wanna try.
Come on along you he and she
It’s the dancers jamboree
Come on and take a chance
Come on and have a dance
To the band of Battery D.
My life long pal Harry Edgington playing an 88 mm Piano in action, at the same time inflating his head
Not exactly Cole Porter, but we weren’t getting his kind of money. To our amazement we got an ovation. Three more jazz numbers and they wouldn’t let us go, to cool them off I got Doug Kidgell our drummer to sing Toselli’s Serenade. When he came to the line:
‘Deep in my heart there is Rapture’ forgetfully we sang our customary version:
“Deep in my guts I’ve got Rupture But for that dear I’d have upped yer.”
We realised our mistake too late, and a great roar of laughter stopped the song in its tracks. We finished up with me impersonating Louis Armstrong doing The St Louis Blues, and took unending curtain calls. Old soldiers reading this may remember that occasion.
Driving back in the staff car, we sat silent in the aura of our unexpected success. To our left the Bay of Algiers was bathed in moonlight. “I never dreamed,” said Harry, “that one day, I would be driven along the Bay of Algiers by moonlight.”
“Didn’t you?” I said, “the first time I saw you I said ‘one day that man is going to be driven along the Bay of Algiers by moonlight’.”
“You’re asking for a thud up the hooter,” he said. “No I wasn’t! What I said was, “the first time I saw you I…””
“All right Milligan, stick this in yer dinner manglers.” He gave me a cigarette. Old sweats will shudder and fall faint when I mention the brand, “V’s!” They had appeared in our rations when we landed in Algiers. “This is,” I said, “living proof that the British soldier will smoke shit, and that goes from Sanitary Orderly Geordie Liddel to General Alexander.” Alf Fildes, our guitarist, disagreed. “Liddel, yes, he lives near it, he’d smoke shit, yes, but I bet a bloke like Alexander wouldn’t wear it.” There followed a classical argument on smoking shit, that resolved in the agreement that General Alexander would smoke shit provided it was offered him by the King. The story went round that ‘V’s’ were India’s contribution to the war. Churchill asked Ghandi if there was a natural commodity that was going to waste, and Ghandi said “Yes, we got plenty of cows’ shit.”
“Right,” said Churchill, “we’re sending you a million rupees to turn it into tobacco.”
Two years went by, Churchill, anxious for news, phones Ghandi:
CHURCHILL:
Ghandi? How’s the Ersatz tobacco coming along?
GHANDI:
All right but we need more money.
CHURCHILL:
Good God, you’ve had a million!
GHANDI:
Yes, you see, so far it looks like tobacco—it smokes like tobacco—but—
CHURCHILL:
But what?
GHANDHI:
It still smells like shit.
The long haul to the front
One day, there was the long awaited news on the notice board.
0600 11 FEB. 1943. Regiment will prepare to move etc. etc.
Great excitement, packing, renewing kit, selling kit, buying fruit for the journey, writing ‘Farewell for ever’ etc. to sweethearts, etc. The day before the move I developed toothache. It started at two in the morning, the pain shot up my head down the back of my neck, disappeared down my spine then reappeared in my chest sideways up the tent pole. How could one tiny hole neutralise a whole man? Will-power! That would stop it. I did will-power till three o’clock. It got worse. Old wives’ recipe! Stuff tobacco into the cavity. I lit the lamp. Edgington