Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [60]
I fiddle my way into town and get to the RAF depot. Like Simon Legree I burst into the kitchen and catch her. She’s rolling dough for a pudding. So this is how you treat me. While I’m on the platform being lovely, you’re rolling dough for puddens. She’s sorry, she was put on duty owing to one of the staff being taken suddenly something or other. Would I like a cup of tea and some fruit cake? How nice. Does she know ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’? I hang around until she comes off duty. It wasn’t easy in an RAF kitchen full of WAAFS, all in the prime of cooking puddens.
She’s gone to tart up, and reappears radiant in her skyblue uniform, buttons blazing, all smart and ready to be married in the Admiral Owen. What a dirty little devil I was. I am about to be led astray by this naughty girl. What’s this, two Sergeants sleeping together? What does KRs say about this. We don’t care. We sign the register before a cow of a landlady with that ‘we know what you’re going to do’ look. What time would we like calling. I say December.
It was hell, folks. Betty threw me on to the bed and had her way with me. She used cold compresses, it was no good, I was getting weaker and weaker. I tell her I’ve got a headache. She can cure it she says, jumping up and down in a fever of sweat and pudding. In the morning she is bubbling with life, as I lay like a geriatric on my death bed, white and feeble. I must get to some Eggs and Chips soon, or a monastery. By day I lay in bed dreading the nights. She returns, strips off, and standing on the bed head, dives on me. When the woman comes to make the bed, she doesn’t notice I’m in it. Twice she puts me in the laundry basket. Oh thank God, it’s time to go back to Italy, dear. This is our last night, she says, we must make it last. She makes it last, I don’t. I slept through the last bit.
The Admiral Owen — where I aged 30 years in a night. The room of naughtiness is marked with an X.
Morning has broken, and so have I. It’s goodbye! She helps me dress. I am on the platform, a cold wind blowing through the seams of my trousers. Will I write to her. Yes. Soon? Yes, I’ll start right away. She can hear the train coming, have we time for a quickie? No. The guard helps me on the train. Am I her Grandfather? The train pulls out. I wave, and she is soon lost to view. I must rest and get my strength back so that I can get off the train unaided. It’s eighteen miles to Frisky Folkestone, the sun is setting, and so am I. I’m ruining my health.
Folkestone
I report to a huge requisitioned transit hotel on the sea front, stripped of everything except the floor. I report to the Orderly Sergeant, check documents, yes the boat leaves at 0900. Bunk beds to infinity, one dull light bulb illuminates the gloom. The room gradually fills with leave-spent soldiers. Here is the historic handwritten record of those exciting days in Funny Folkestone:
A day in Folkestone
What a filler! I knew it would come in useful one day.
On board the steam packet, we pitch and toss on the grey spume-flecked waters, heading into a chill wind, laced with face-pecking rain. Some walk around the decks, I stay in what in better days was the saloon dining-room. Now it’s just tables, chairs, tea, buns and fag ends. The eyes blink, the mind goes into neutral, the throb of the ship’s engines. It’s rather like taking a boat to the Styx. Alas, it’s worse, soon it’s Crappy Calais and the excitement of No. 4 Transit Camp with its damp beds and go-as-you-please urinal. A visit to the Hotel de Ville. Beans on toast cooked by a French chef made our journey a little more bearable.
Strange I never mentioned my travelling companion’s name; and from what I remember, I’m glad. Next morning it’s raining in French. It will do le garden bon. I’m glad to be on the train heading for Italy. The leave was an experience — it was