Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [3]
“Hey, Joe,” (he’d got my name wrong!) “you wanna change money or a fuck?”
“Sterling,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“How mucha you gotta?”
I smiled secretively. I handed him the Pile Suppository box.
He shook out the money. “Six pounds?” he said. “Is datta all?” He was joking, he was just trying to play it cool. I nodded like James Cagney and I made with the shoulders. “What’s the rate?” I said, this time as George Raft. Two thousand lire. Great. The hit man looked up and down the street. “You waita here, wid my two a friends.” He indicated two young urchins and made off.
“He go makea da deal,” said the eldest.
I waited. We all waited. “He takea longa time,” said one urchin. “I go see whata happen” and left. Three down, one to go. We wait.
“Something ees a wrong, I go and see, you waita herea.”
And none to go. I waited ‘herea’, the evening dew settled on me, midnight, I waited ‘herea’ for three hours. Technically I’m still waiting. James Cagney, George Raft and Bombardier Milligan have been conned. I walked back down the Via Roma as Charlie Chaplin.
“Wanna buy cigarette Americano?” A young urchin hove to.
Yes! I’ll get my own back! I’ll buy cigarettes cheap! Twenty Philip Morris. It was strange — the ship bearing my six pounds in a Pile Suppository box had risked U-boats, dive bombers, all that bravery for nothing.
Back at the 92 General, Rogers is waiting expectantly. “Well, ha’ you got spondulicks?” he said, rubbing his hands. I tell my woeful story, he laughs at each revelation. Never mind, have a real American cigarette. I open a packet like John Wayne, give the base a flick, sawdust spurts out. Rogers laughs out loud. Sawdust! “Why not start a circus?” he says, ducking a boot at his head.
TORRE DEL GRECO
Torre Del Greco
Torre Del Greco was a dust and rags village astride the Salerno-Naples Road on the south side of Vesuvius. It was adjacent to this that a new tented camp had been erected for our ‘loonies’. A short journey by lorry saw us settling in. It was life as per Afragola. The warm weather had come and we watched as the sun dried out our mud-caked men, making them look like fossilized corpses of Turkish Janissaries. The office tent is in among olive groves, yes. Olive Groves, the diva that sang with Ivor Novello. Who could christen a child Olive Groves? Why not Walnut Trees?
A letter from my mother gives dire warning of the coming shortage of underwear in England. “You would be wise to stock up now, son,” she urges. “It’s already started. Neighbours have stopped hanging their laundry out and your father sleeps with his underwear on for safety.” Obeying my mother’s warning, I bought, stole, cajoled a mass of underwear, from a series of holes on a waist band to heavily patched beer-stained transparent long-johns.
From the medical board I had received my ‘U are now officially down-graded’ papers. I was still glad to see on the certificate that I had Hernia…Nil, Varicose Veins…Nil, a draw! I also noted that I had No Gynaecological disorders. I wrote and told my mother I was B2. She wrote back: “Your father and I are so proud, none of our family have ever had the B2 before.”
March 1944
It was spring, the sun shone and the mud disappeared. Banging his boot on the ground, Guardsman Rogers exclaims: “My God! I think I’ve found land!”
The New Broom Cweeps Slean
The camp is to be run by a loony officer; he’s been blown up on the Volturno and blown down again at Cassino. Captain Peters of the Queens. Tall and thin, large horse-like face, pale blue eyes with a rapid blink and a twitch of the head; all done with a strange noise at the back of the nose that goes ‘phnut’. He is balding and has a fine head of hairs. Speaks very rapidly due to an overdraft at Lloyds.
To date one had the feeling that the Rehabilitation Camp was totally unknown and unrecorded in the Army lists. With the coming of Captain Peters all that changed. The camp went on being unknown and unrecorded, but now we had an officer in charge. The camp had a turnover of