Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [81]
“It’s World War Three and they’ve started without us,” I shouted, ducking for cover. From down the craggy hillside come armed carabinieri. They are shouting. We take to the oars and row like mad in all directions; we would have moved faster if we had just drifted. I am shouting “Ferma! Sono Inglese.”
A good-looking Italian captain, speaking like George Sanders with garlic, asks what we are doing. What a sight we make, three of us naked save shirts, two totally naked, ; one naked with socks on, me in a pair of groin-crippling underpants pretending I am Tarzan in my brown boiled boots.
“We are swimming,” I say, forgetting I am standing on land.
“This is a prohibited area,” he says.
I tell him we are prohibited people, but he doesn’t understand.
“This is a top security island,” he says, “where war criminals are being held.” I ask him what part are they being held by, but he still doesn’t understand and waves his Beretta pistol. I wave back, he is getting angry, we must leave.
In total disarray we clamber into our craft. Have you read Three Men in a Boat? — well, multiply that by seven. Everyone rowed furiously in a different direction, the boat was coming apart. As the Italians were threatening and shooing us away, the Captain said something to his men and they all burst out laughing. As they were laughing in Italian we couldn’t understand it. I looked at my motley crew and realized how lucky Captain Bligh had been.
My God! A squall blows up! Soon we are bailing for our lives! A boatman from the shore takes us in tow, we are very grateful until he asks for two hundred lire. We argue, he explains that we would never have made it back on our own.
“Fuck off,” says Barlow to a man who has just saved our lives.
What a day!
“Dear Mother, Today we went swimming and were nearly shot at by Italians and drowned, wish you were here.”
We jump aboard one of the shuttle passion waggons throbbing on the beach, filled with spent soldiers. Why are we waiting? “My mate’s having a shag in that hut.” He points to a fragile beach hut shaking backwards and forwards under the assault from within, then there’s a pause. “‘ees ‘avin a rest,” says the soldier, the hut starts to vibrate again, the door opens and out comes a weed of a soldier who gets a desultory cheer from his mates, a portly tart hoisting up her bathing costume frames in the doorway, waving him goodbye with the money.
“Orl finished shaggin’?” cries the driver, cries of yes, and we lollop forward over the sand on to the road and away. As we sped down the coast road I was stricken with the divine view and had a shot at taking a photograph. It doesn’t exactly do justice to the scene, but it’s evidence to say that I’m not making this all up.
Two years in the front line — Army food.
At end of day to a trattoria for dinner
Spike after a good dinner
The waiter who served us
Swimming starkers
June 17th 1946.
Barbary Coast opened at the Bellini Theatre: a packed house, with soldiers queuing all day. Again the Bill Hall Trio, with a lot more gags in the act, steal the show; a corps de ballet from Rome did next best -all top-class dancers and only in this show because Rome Opera House is temporarily closed.
Great write-ups the next day! Then the icing on the cake: we are to tour, but this time we are to include Venice and Vienna! Someone should have told us, “Man, these are the best days of your life, eat them slowly.”
Sunday morning, all bustle and packing kit on to the charabanc, Gunner Hall as usual is missing.
“She must be late paying him,” says Bornheim. All set, we pile on to the CSE charabanc with Umberto the fat Iti driver pinning Holy Pictures on the dashboard to ward off the devil, accidents, Protestants and the husband of the woman he is knocking off.
It’s a sparkling day, the sun streaming through the holes in Bornheim’s underwear. “What’s this Venice like?” he says. I tell him when you step out the front door you go splash! People don’t take dogs for a walk, they take fish. Wasn’t the city resting on piles?