Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [36]
Anna Morto
Little did we know of the tragedy that was impending. On our return we were let into the flat by daughter Anna. “Aye Steve,” she said, and kissed him. “This is my friend, Spike.” Anna was tall, blue-eyed and blonde. She could have been a model. Her brother is back from school, a dark lad with numerous questions: “Were we in the fighting, how was it, had we won any battles?” It could have been any boy anywhere.
Anna works of an evening. Blast! Chance one gone! She works in the American Officers’ Club, the Nirvanetta. She is bemoaning Rome’s loss of elegance. She tells us that during Mussolini’s regime a woman was safe to walk anywhere after dark, even during the German occupation, but now, she threw her hands up in despair, now it was terrible, she couldn’t take the drunkenness and the lechery. Chance number two gone. She wasn’t joking, as we were to find out.
We were tired and after a shower I donned my terrible ‘Made-out-of-cheap-sheet-then-dyed-with-a-dye-that-comes-off-in-bed’ pyjamas. I was reading old English newspapers and magazines from home. I must have dozed off and I was awakened by Anna coming into my room. She put her finger to her lips for silence, then whispered: “Can I borrow this chair?” Yes. Did she want to borrow me? I had two legs less, but I was willing to be sat on. No. I was the last one to see her alive.
At seven next morning, Raymondo burst into my room: “Anna Morto,” he shouted. I leapt from my bed and followed him to the kitchen. Anna was in the chair, a gas pipe leading from the stove to her mouth. Hurriedly I picked her up. It was horrible; rigor mortis had set in, and she stayed in the shape of a person seated. Steve put the mirror to her mouth.
The mother is distraught, and that poor boy, that little innocent face as yet unused to a world without a father, now his sister…The mother says she has sent for the police. It would be best if we weren’t found here. We leave in embarrassing haste with our pyjamas under our battledress. I often wonder if having two Allied soldiers in her home was the last straw for Anna. Please God, I hope not. I will never know. How insensitive we were. We never even went back or wrote or said thank you. What kind of a person was I…?
It put a terrible damper on the rest of the holiday and soon we were in the lorry rumbling back to our Alma Mater, Maddaloni. Trouble with lorries is you can only see out of the back. “You see where you’ve been and you already know that,” says the Yew.
Sometimes — on a dark night — I still see Anna’s face.
April 17
MY DIARY:
MY BIRTHDAY. I’M 27. HAD EXTRA CUP OF TEA.
The news tells us that the Germans in Italy are on their last legs.
Führer Bunker
HITLER IS IN THE KARZI GIVING HIMSELF ONE OF DOCTOR MORRELL’S ENEMAS.
ADOLPH:
Allez oops! Ahhh! Dat is better.
GOEBBELS:
Mein Führer, mein Führer.
ADOLPH:
Dere’s only one of me.
GOEBBELS:
In Italy our troops are running out of legs.
ADOLPH:
You Schwein, you haff ruined my happy enema hour.
I see Thelma Oxnevad. “Spike, did you enjoy your leave?” Never mind that, Thelma, marry me at eight o’clock tonight. QMS Ward is asking me to come back to the band. I say, what about my impending coronary? He says that’s all shit. As a qualified Quarter Master Sergeant he says I’m fit. But playing the trumpet could kill me! Yes it could, but if I take the risk, so will he. OK, I’ll try. There I’ll be, playing a great Bunny Berrigan chorus, I hit a top G, clutch my heart and crash face downwards on a mattress. ATS Candy Withers will raise my lovely head in her arms. Have I any last request? Yes, yes, yes, if she could just take her clothes off.
Also my