Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [75]
We returned as the evening purple cascaded down on the Sorrentine peninsula.
The ferry is cloyed with chattering screaming Neapolitans and flies. At the stern a row breaks out. I can only see the pictures of a crowd of males hitting one unfortunate individual, some actually hanging over the boat railings to give better purchase for their assault. As in all mobs, anyone can join in the hitting, even though they don’t know the reason for it, and even I was tempted. It’s the last boat, crowded. We are the only two soldiers on board. I address a seaman: “Hello sailor,” I say. “Can you take our picture?” Si. The sailor smiles and points the ancient Kodak. Click! Bornheim and I are immortalized.
The cool evening air and the last warmth of the sun touched our skin. We stood at the rails watching Capri sink into the oncoming crepuscular night; in ancient times the Pharos on Capri would have been igniting its faggot fires to warn ships bearing grain from Africa of its rocky prominence. Bornheim and I were taking on glasses of grappa to light our own faggot fires, and warn those self-same ships against our own rocky prominences. Arriving back at the billets and settling back into the ways of soldiery was difficult. After lights out, we reminisced in our khaki cots. “It didn’t really happen, did it?” he said.
Bombardier Milligan, a moment before looking the other way
Me telling Bornheim where my hand has gone.
Last shot of Capri before we head for home
Nearly!
These were the days when we should have been lotus-eating but the NAAFI didn’t stock them. Life was a series of paid gigs. The Bill Hall Trio, with Bornheim on piano and George Puttock on Drums, plays for dances in, around, and sometimes under Naples. Every band in those days had to have an MC. Ours won his at El Alamein. He was Sergeant Bob Hope, yes, Bob Hope. What a letdown when he showed up.
“You’re not Bob Hope?”
“Oh yes I am.”
“You don’t look like Bob Hope.” . “Well, I bloody well am Bob Hope.”
“Not the Bob Hope.”
“No — a Bob Hope.”
We finally got him to use ‘Dick’ Hope. Dick or Bob, he nearly did for us.
We are in a van returning from a successful gig at the Royal Palace at Caserta, a dead straight road that leads to Naples. There are no lights. Bill Hall is counting and recounting his money, hoping to make it more. He’s turning it over for the tenth time.
“You keeping it aired,” says Mulgrew who’s got his in a sealed Scottish death grip in his right hand.
Bornheim’s lighter illuminates his face; he tries to set fire to Hall’s money.
“Wot you bloody doin?” says Hall, beating out the flames.
I’m looking through the windscreen from my bench seat; ahead are two lone sets of car lights; I can tell by their excessive brightness they’re American. They are approaching at speed. I have a nasty feeling. The lights are swaying. In no time the car is on us. It veers across to our side. The idiot Dick Hope is rooted to the wheel. I lunge over his shoulder and wrench the steering wheel to the left. As I do so, the uncoming vehicle hits us, there’s a screech of metal, it rips the whole of our undercarriage out, our four wheels are hulled from under us and our bodywork crashes to the road. We skid along on the chassis, the road coming up through the floor. We grind to a halt.
“Everyone alright?” shouts Bornheim.
“99, 100,” says Hall, counting his money.
We kick open the rear door and scramble out. The first thing is the unending blare of a motor horn coming from the other vehicle, a banshee sound. It’s an American Pontiac staff car, nose deep in a ten-foot ditch. In the dark we slither down. The driver is impaled on the steering column shorting the horn. His eyes have been jettisoned on his cheeks. Dead. We unstick him. In the rear are a colonel and wife/lady/screw. She was unconscious and saying “O! O! O!” A lot of help — didn’t she know any other letters? I drag her out; she