Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [44]
Students of punctuation will be rolling on the floor.
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BDR TA MILLIGAN
95_024
O BRANCH GHQ 2nd Echelon
CMF.
Dear Old Boy,
A thousand pardons for failing to write to you for so long…when I explain the reason you will understand only too well…Lily got maried about two month back, and I have been on the boose ever since…honest son, nothing ever hit me so hard…I worshipped that girl in my own peculiar fashion…lets forget it eh?. I suppose you have heard about the
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well old Harry, I’m going home to Blighty in three weeks time…What are the chances of seeing you old son??? I will drop in and see you people in any case. Its raining oceans in Italy to day. Harry I well be hoping to settle down in N London after the war…(On my own) so i would like very much to be seeing a lot of you and your gang at my place (Where ever that is)…I don’t quite know what I’m going to do without Lily…..9 years is a long time to be in love with one girl…..Lets forget it…..I want you to give all the following PTO
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NASH, and any that I may have forgotten. WELL XXXX Harry I am tn the dumps…I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do on leave…I have no bloody home to go to and the girl?…ha ha what bloody mockery life is…dont take any notice of the depression I8m laying on, write soon harry…
Your Sincere friend
Spike
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Transcribed typed letter
But despite Lily, I was still writing to my harem in the UK- Beryl, Bette, Mae, Ivy; there were shortages in England, but not of this.
Zounds! It’s too much to believe. “The Band are to have a week’s leave in Rome,” says Major New. “It’s for the good work you’ve all done.”
I didn’t understand. We’d never done any work. As if this is not enough, dear reader, on the 23 July my life is enriched by the legacy of Startling Grope. He’s left orders that from this day henceforth I am to be promoted to Unpaid Acting Bombardier. No money, but I can put two stripes on my sleeve and I don’t have to curtsy to Sergeants any more. Startling Grope has his little joke, for one day later…I am now PAID BOMBARDIER!
“Someone has blundered,” says Sergeant Britton, who is now only one stripe ahead! I catch lovely long Captain Thelma Oxnevad. I show her my two stripes. “Any chance now?” I say, but before she can answer me I am laid low — not by illness, no, by treatment. Typhus inoculation. First shot.
“Roll your sleeve up,” said a Medical Orderly. “Just a little prick.”
I said I could see he was.
“Can you feel that?” he said.
“Yes, coming out the other side.”
He was well pleased.
Soon I’m in bed with a high temperature.
“Have you heard the news?” says Steve, holding up a paper.
I listen. I can’t hear anything. What’s he mean? I am the news.
“They’ve dropped the Atom Bomb.”
Very good Steve, but who’s dropped it on who? The Yanks! Of course! They’ve got the money. He held up the paper.
‘ATOM BOMB DROPPED IN HIROSHIMA’. I was delirious and really didn’t give a bugger. “It’s their own bloody fault,” I said.
August 9
DIARY:
BOOSTER INOCULATION
Ouchhhhhh! He was still a little prick. This time it was worse, a hundred and three temperature!
“At least you keep the room warm at night,” says Lewis.
Sadist! The Rev. Sergeant Beaton hears my groans and comes to minister the last rites. He’s disappointed, I’ll live. “Whisky in hot tea is good for yew.”
I buy a bottle — it’s good for me! And by the amount he drank, good for him. I have two doubles, then send out for hot tea. It’s a knockout. While I sleep, another plane is on its way to Nagasaki. By the time I wake the city is no more and the nature of war is to become a nightmare, something that I was just coming out of. I’m pouring with sweat. I feel like a wet rag but can’t find one anywhere. Nagasaki! That used to be the name of one of my favourite busking tunes!
Hot ginger and Dynamite
That’s all they get at night
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellas chew t’baccy
And the women wiggy waggy woo.
I haven’t heard that song since. Amazing how one atom bomb can kill a song writer’s income.