Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [7]
“Health my friend! What goes on there?”
“The green swan of the East meets the grey bear,” I said.
“Pass it up,” he said.
I’m told that Captain Peters has gone to the Portici to ‘An Officers’ Dance’. “What is it?” I said. “Firewalking?”
I fell asleep knowing I’d never have another day like that.
I was wrong. I awoke and it was another day just like that.
The cooks had ‘buggered off’. We raided the cookhouse and made breakfast, porridge and volcanic ash. The grey powdery fall-out was everywhere. It looked like a plague of dandruff.
Captain Peters approaches, waving his stick and cracking his shin in the process. “Ah! Milligan, I’m putting you and phnut! Rogers in charge.” Why? There isn’t anybody else. “I’m off to the Town Major’s. If any of the cooks come back, phnut! put them under arrest.”
“Is that for cooking or deserting?”
The eruption reached its zenith that day, and then all was quiet; but the breakdown of all organization at the camp must have reached the ear of someone who decided that loonies need peace and tranquillity to recover, and so it came to pass.
Map showing Baiano
“We are moving to a place called Baiano.” The Guardsman has spoken. The farming village of Baiano lay N-E of Naples, by about twenty kilometres, on a bad day thirty (see map).
“I will, phnut, drive,” said Captain Peters, talking to the steering wheel of the jeep. A dry sunny day, the Captain dons dust goggles, thinks he’s Biggies. “Hold tight,” he shouts, and with the engine roaring, engages every gear and stalls.
We lurch away, our bodies rocketing back and forth like hiccuping drunks. Simple single-storey buildings line our route, in clusters, then occasional spaces like missing teeth.
Now and then an affluent neo-classical villa. Dust has us putting handkerchiefs round our faces; we look like an armed posse after Billy the Kid. Midday, we reach Nola, a dusty working/middle-class city.
“We’ll stop here for phnut! refreshments,” says the Captain, pulling up outside a trattoria. We sit at an outside table, sipping coffee and brandy. The lass who served us, Oh! help me! she’s lush, dark, boobs, buttocks, a smile like a piano keyboard, eyes like Bambi, and oh! those dimples on the back of her knees. A line of Shermans on tank transporters rumble and clank through the Piazza. There was still a war on.
“I suppose some of those will become coffins for some poor bastards,” says Sergeant Arnolds, himself an ex-tank man.
Having unwound his neck from staring at the waitress, Captain Peters says: “This used to be a phnut! Roman garrison town.” This remark brought forth absolutely no response, in fact the silence became positively an embarrassment. I tried to help.
“That was very nice of you to tell us that this was a Roman garrison town.”
“Oh,” he said, smilingly, “think nothing of it.” In fact we didn’t think anything of it.
The bill. Captain Peters carries out a vigorous patting of his pockets, the best display of overacting I’ve ever seen. “Damn,” he says, “I’ve come out without any money.” He was a known mean bastard. On pay day, before his money even saw the light of day, it was into an envelope on its way ‘To the little woman who needs it’. He would have had us believe it was an impoverished female dwarf.
Revenge is sweet, but not fattening. After the war I was about to open an account at Lloyds of Lewisham and I was to meet the manager. My God, it was Captain Peters. “Milligan,” he said joyfully.
Hurriedly I started patting my pockets. “Damn,” I said, “I’ve come out without any money, the little woman needs it.” To my lasting joy I still have an unpaid overdraft there — ten shillings since 1949.
Early afternoon, and we arrived at the little village of Baiano with its paved grid-orientated streets lined with two- storeyed buildings. The affluent lived in the outskirts in cool villas. Set in flat farming country