Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [23]
“Your lust will soon be allayed Spike, a consignment of Virgin ATS are to be posted here.”
Meantime I still try to home in on Sheila Frances. She jives in! Yes, she will meet me. She’ll never regret it! With toe in my Prime and all parts in Grand Prix order. Ah yes, She’ll love my Grand Prix. 8 o’clock outside the 604 ATS Company HQ Caserta.
I am there, beautiful, radiating Brasso, Blanco, Brylcreem and Brio, with all my things revolving at high speed. I am there dead on 8 o’clock, I am also there dead on at half-past eight, I am also dead on there at nine, and I am there dead on again at nine-thirty, and I went on to be dead on at ten o’clock. Where was she, my little darling dirty rotten little tart, letting me and it down! Today I wonder, was I at the right address? Somewhere in the street of Caserta is a grey-haired old lady in a ragged ATS uniform still waiting for it.
I withdraw to the Forces Canteen in the High Street and am found drinking tea, eating a sandwich and finding consolation watching the wobbling bum of the manageress. Next Hay Major Rodes and his rupture hear of my adventure. “So your little soldier tart didn’t show, eh?” He hands me a drawing.
Band Biz
We want to expand the band. We would like a string section. There is a fine fiddler, one Corporal Spaldo. At concerts he plays Montés’ Czardas. Would he like to play in our band? He shudders. No, not for him the nigger rhythm music. There is a postscript to this tale.
Many years after the war I was in a night club. The cabaret is supplied by a ‘Krazy Kaper’ Band. I notice a violinist, wearing a large ginger wig and beard, a football jersey, a kilt with a whitewash brush for a sporran, fishnet stockings and high heel shoes. They play ‘Does chewing gum leave its flavour on the bedpost over night’. It’s Spaldo! I couldn’t resist it, I went over and said, “Changed your mind, eh?”
So my lotus days in the band continued. We were paid three hundred lire a gig, my trumpet solos working out at a penny a time. Our finances were organized by Welfare Officer Major Bloore. He sometimes writes to me from the Cayman Islands.
Now I am moved from Filing to the Welfare Office, under the eye of Private Eddie Edwards.
Pte. E. Edwards Posed with a soft filter, facing Nor’ East and lightly oiled
I am to draw posters for the current films being shown. My first one is Rita Hayworth. No, I’m not doing it right, says Major Rodes, try again. Rita Hayworth II, no, it’s not right. Rita Hayworth III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, no, I just can’t get Rita Hayworth right for West of Pecos; I can’t even get her right for East, North or South of Pecos.
“Sir, I didn’t join the army to draw a regiment of Hay-worths. I want out!”
“You fool, you little khaki fool,” losing a golden opportunity to become the great artist he could make me. The Major stamps off in a kilt-swinging rage.
“He’s very temperamental,” says Eddie.
“I think he’s in the change,” I reply. “And his truss must be upside down.”
The Aquarium Club
This is to be a new officers’ drinking club. The venue is a farmhouse just outside the town.
My penance is to do more murals. This time sea life. The Major drives me to the site. There are no men on the farm. “Tutti nella Armata.” At the moment they were all planting cabbages in Sussex; among them Mario and Franco who were to stay on to revolutionize our eating habits with their trattorias. Only the mother and the daughter Maria were left (in Italy all daughters not called mothers are Marias). She is a rough peasant beauty, five foot seven inches, tall for an Italian, and very tall for a dwarf. She has large brown expressive legs and eyes, tousled black hair and brown satin skin. (Arrrghhh!) Her mother, pardon me, looked like a bundle of oily rags ready for sorting. She seemed ever fearful of her daughter being