His Part in My Downfall
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1978
Published in Penguin Books 1980
Reissued in this edition 2012
Copyright © Spike Milligan Productions Ltd, 1978
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-24-196618-1
His Part in My Downfall
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN BOOKS
Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he was educated in India and England before joining the Royal Artillery at the start of the Second World War and serving in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, touring Europe with the Bill Hall Trio and the Ann Lenner Trio, before joining forces with, among others, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, to create the legendary Goon Show. Broadcast on BBC Radio, the ten series of the Goon Show ran from 1951 until 1960 and brought Spike to international fame, as well as to the edge of sanity and the break-up of his first marriage. He had subsequent success as a stage and film actor, as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children’s stories, and with his long-running one-man show. In 1992 he was made a CBE and in 2001 an honorary KBE, and in 2000 and 2001 he received two Lifetime Achievement Awards for writing and for comedy. He died in 2002.
Clive James, in a review of one of my war books, quoted it as “an unreliable history of the war”. Well, this makes him a thoroughly unreliable critic, because I spend more time on getting my dates and facts right than I did in actually writing. I admit the way I present it may seem as though my type of war was impossible and all a figment of a hyper-thyroid imagination, but that’s the way I write. But all that I wrote did happen, it happened on the days I mention, the people I mention are real people and the places are real. So I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened. I even got down to actually finding out what the weather was like, for every day of the campaign. I’ve spent a fortune on beer and dinners interviewing my old Battery mates, and phone calls to those members overseas ran into over a hundred pounds. Likewise I included a large number of photographs actually taken in situ, don’t tell me I faked them all, so no more “unreliable history of the war” chat.
I want to thank the following for their help with documents, photographs, maps, recollections which are included in this volume: Major J. Leaman, Lt. S. Pride, Lt. C. Budden, B.S.M. L. Griffin, Sgt. F. Donaldson, the late Bombardier Edwards, Bombardier H. Holmwood, Bombardier S. Price, Bombardier A. Edser, Bombardier S. Kemp, L/Bdr. A. Fildes, Gunner “Jam-Jar” Griffin, Bombardier D. Sloggit, L/Bdr. R. Bennett, Gunner J. Shapiro, Gunner H. Edgington, Gunner “Dipper” Dye, Driver D. Kidgell, The War Museum Picture Library, Mrs Thelma Hunt, Mrs P. Hurren, all of whom have helped to give you this “unreliable history of the war”.
This volume ends up on a sad note, even for a born joker like me: the conflict caught up with me and I was invalided out of it. However, the rest of the book tells of what an unusual mob we were and have been ever since. The closeness of those years still exists in as much as we have two reunions a year, something no other British Army unit have. This book is a dedication to the spirit and friendship of “D” Battery, 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery.
S. M.
Bayswater
March 1978
MY DIARY: STILL AT WAR! EARLY CLOSING IN CATFORD. READ LETTER FROM MOTHER SAYING CHIESMANS OF LEWISHAM ARE SO SHORT OF STOCK, THE MANAGER AND STAFF SIT IN THE SHOP MIMING THE WORDS “SOLD OUT”.
Dear Reader, the beds in the Dorchester Hotel are the most comfortable in England. Alas! neither Driver Kidgell nor Lance-Bombardier Milligan are in a bed at the Dorchester – no! they are trying to sleep on a 10-ton Scammell lorry, parked on the top deck of 4,000-ton HMS Boxer, inside whose innards are packed 19 Battery, 56th Heavy Regiment, all steaming in the hold; from below comes the merry sound of men retching and it’s all from Gunner Edgington. We are bound for Sunny Salerno. For thirteen days since the 5th Army landing, a ferocious battle had ensued on the beach-head. Even as we rode the waves we knew not what to expect when our turn came. The dawn comes up like Thinder. Thinder? Yes, that’s Thin Thunder. “Shhhhhh,” we all shout. The chill morning air touches the khaki somnambulists sleeping heroically for their King and Country. We are awakened by Gunner Woods in the driving cab, who has fallen asleep on the motor horn. A puzzled ship’s Captain is wondering why he can hear the sound of a lorry at sea. Kidgell gives a great jaw-cracking yawn and that’s him finished for the day. He stretches himself but doesn’t get any longer. Deep in his eyes I see engraved the word, “TEA”. “Wakey wakey,” he said, but didn’t. The ship is silent. The helmsman’s face shows white through the wheel house.
HMS Boxer, which landed us at Salerno. This picture was taken after the war, when she’d been converted to a Radar Ship.
“It is Dawn,” yawns Kidgell.
“My watch says twenty past,” I yawned.
“Yes! It’s exactly twenty past Dawn,” he yawned.
We yawned. Like a comedy duo, we both stand and pull our trousers on; mistake! he has mine and vice versa. The light is growing in the Eastern sky, it reveals a great grey convoy of ships, plunging and rising at the dictation of the sea. LCTs. LCTs, some thirty of them, all flanked by navy Z-Class destroyers. The one on our port bow is stencilled B4. Imagine the confusion of a wireless conversation with it.
“Hello B4, are you receiving me?”
PAUSE
“Hello B4 answering.”
PAUSE
“Hello B4, why didn’t you answer B4?”
“Because we didn’t hear you before.”
In the early light the sea is blue-black like ink. Kidgell is carefully folding his blankets into a mess, “I haven’t slept that well for years.”
“How do you know?” I said. “You were asleep.”
He chuckled, “Well it feels like I slept well.”
“Where did you feel it, in the legs? the elbows? teeth?” I was determined to pursue the matter to its illogical conclusion; I mean if sane people are going around saying “I slept well last night”, what would lunatics say? “I stayed awake all night so I could see if I slept well”? I mean – we are interrupted by the shattering roar of aircraft!! “Spitfires!” someone said, and we all got up again.
“Thank God they weren’t German,” says Kidgell.
“Why thank him,” I said. “He doesn’t run the German air force, thank Hitler.”
“Alright, clever Dick.” He giggled. “This is going to sound silly – thank Hitler they weren’t Germans.”
The helmsman’s face showed white through the wheel house.
I produce a packet of Woodbines. I offer one to Kidgell. I have to … he’s got the matches. My watch says 12.20; that means it’s about seven o’clock. We stow our gear into a lorry full of sleeping Gunners with variable pitch snoring; three of them are snoring the chord of C Minor. We decide to walk “forrard”. The Boxer makes a frothy swathe as her flat prow divides the waters. The sky is turning into post-dawn colours – scarlet, pink, lemon. It looked like the ending of a treacly MGM film where John Wayne joins his Ghost Riders in the sky. (Personally I can’t wait for him to.) It’s chilly; we wear overcoats with the collars up. Kidgell looks pensively out towards Italy.
“I was wondering about the landing.”
“Don’t worry about the landing, I’ll hoover it in the morning.”
He ignored me, but then everybody did. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking? This could mean promotion,” I said.
“I was thinking, supposing they land us in six foot of water.”
“Then everyone five foot eleven and three quarters will drown.”
“That’s the end of me, then.”
“I thought you were a champion swimmer!”
“You can’t swim in Army Boots.”
“You’re right, there is not enough room.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about ten words to the minute.”
A merry matelot approaches with a Huge Brown Kettle. “You lads like some cocoa?”
We galloped at the speed of light to our big packs and returned to meet the merry matelot as he descended from the Bridge. He pours out the thick brown remaining sludge. The gulls in our wake scream as they dive-bomb the morning garbage. We sip the cocoa, holding the mug with both hands to warm them. A change from holding the mug to warm the Naafi tea. Another cigarette, what a lunatic habit! “Here we are,” I said. “We go to these bastards who make this crap and we say ‘We will give you money for twenty of those fags’, we smoke them, we make the product disappear! Ha! Supposing you bought a piano on the same basis? Suddenly, in the middle of a concert it disappears, you have to belt out and buy another one to finish the concerto. It’s lunacy.”
In the deck-house, a red-faced officer scans the horizon ahead. “I wonder exactly where we are,” says Kidgell.
“I think we’re on the ancient sea of Tyrrhenum Sive Inferum.” That finishes him.
“When we reach Sicily we will hug the coast to afford us air cover and the way things are, I’d say we could just afford it.”
We are travelling one of the most ancient trade routes in history, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Mamelukes, Turks and Mrs Doris Hare. “Fancy us being part of history,” I said. “I don’t fancy it,” said Kidgell.
The Tannoys crackle. “Attention, please.”
A Gunner faints. “What’s up?” we ask.
“I thought I heard someone say please.”
“Attention … This is the Captain speaking … (What a good memory he had) … In three minutes the Ack-Ack guns will be firing test bursts … this is only a practice, repeat, practice.”
Soon the sky was festooned with erupting shells, black puffs of smoke with a red nucleus from the barrels of the multiple Pom Poms. The Tannoy again.
“Hello this is your – ” a burst of amplified coughing follows.
“It’s the resident consumptive,” I said.
The coughing ceases. “Attention, that practice firing will be repeated every morning at – ” Coughing – coughing – “at” – coughing …
The helmsman’s face showed white through the wheel house.
“I feel a sudden attack of roll-call coming on,” I said.
I was right. Sgt. King lines us up on deck. We answer our names and anyone’s that isn’t there; even if they called “Rasputin” a voice answers “Sah.”
“Milligan?”
“Sah!”
“Devine?”
“Sah!”
“Edgington? … Edgington?”
From the deck below comes a weak voice “Sah!” followed by retching.
Britannia rules the waves, but in this case, she waives the rules. A roar of engines, the Spitfires return, we all get up again. They repeat roaring back and forth through the day, we get used to it, we get so used to it that when a Focke Wolfe shoots us up, we’re all standing up, aren’t we? Breakfast is happening in the galley.
“I have been a slave to breakfast all my life but breakfast and a galley slave never!” says Kidgell.
We lined up head on to a trio of Navy cooks, who doled out Spam Fritters, Bread, Marge, Jam and Tea and avoided looking at it when they did. We ate on top deck enjoying the sea breeze, the pleasant weather … were we really going to war or were we on our way to Southend for the day? As Kidgell is licking his mess-tin clean the klaxons go, submarine scare! Immediately the destroyers start circling, gun crews scramble to their mounts, the barrels trained down. … A false alarm! Curses! I wanted to see the Greeny wake as the missile raced from the U-boat, a sneer on the German Captain’s lips, “Take zat, Englander.” On the bridge of HMS Dauntless, Lt. Wynford-Beaumont-Plague turned his trim little craft towards the black periscope. “Full speed ahead.” The words came through clenched teeth and fists. Too late, the Germans suddenly see the bows of the British destroyer slice through the conning tower, splitting the Kaiser’s picture into a thousand fragments. “We didn’t even get a depth charge,” says Kidgell.
“My God,” I said, “is there a charge on depth now?”
A long green groaning thing is approaching. The identity tags say “Edgington. 953271 C of E.”
“Was that a Jerry sub?” he said.
“No, it was a false alarm,” I said.
“Oh dear,” he moaned, “I wanted something to cheer me up.”
He managed a wry smile, opened a tin marked “Emergency Chocolate Ration”, and took out a cigarette; never a stingy one he offered them round. The fact there was only one in the tin left much to be desired. I desired it so I took it.
“You sod,” he said. We shared it.
“You feeling any better?” I asked.
He groaned, “Argggggg. I’m no bloody good at sea.”
“But you’re always at sea, Harry.”
“I’ve missed me bloody breakfast.”
“We’ve just had breakfast, and believe me, you haven’t missed anything.”
Edgington’s empty stomach rumbles loudly. “Spitfires,” shouts Kidgell. We all get up again.
“What was for breakfast?” he said.
“We don’t know,” I said. “There’s a court of enquiry this afternoon.”
Mid-day, the sun is out, it’s that perfect temperature, not hot not cold, like Naafi tea.
MY DIARY: SIGHTED NORTH WEST TIP OF SICILY!
If my geographical recollections were right, that would be Capo San Vito. It wasn’t. In the evening light inland mountains seemed made of purple mist; on the sea was a green-grey seafret; to the primitive mariner it must have given birth to legends, to Gunner Liddel it gave forth to “I wonder what’s for dinner.” He watches a destroyer’s evasive zig-zag course. “Driver must be pissed,” he says.
He’d been a regular for eleven years and had risen to the rank of Private. He was sweating on being downgraded, I didn’t think he could be, from where he was the only way was up. He had two great bunions on his feet, mind you, he didn’t think they were great. They had promised to down-grade him 2B. I approached him, struck a Hamlet-like pose and said, “2B or not 2B.” He tried to throw me overboard.
“It’ll be my luck to get killed and next day it’ll come through downgraded to 2B.”
“That would be terrible,” I said, “being killed is bad enough, but to be a corpse and 2B as well, that’s too much.”
The Cocoa-Pot Matelot introduces himself. He was Eddie Hackshaw and from what I hear, still is, a short squat London lad with a cheery smile. He has taken a fancy to me. He gave me a silver Arab ring for luck. He troops Kidgell, Edgington and self down to see the engine-room. We meet the engineers, they are embalmed in oil and grease, all Liverpudlians.
“These are the Whackers who do the engines,” he said.
“Ah, the famous Do-Whacker-dos.” (Groans.)
They had been working long hours since “D” day, and looked desperately tired.
“It was bloody murder, two of our lads were killed on deck by Jerry artillery!”
We sat at their mess table, which was a mess.
“We haven’t had time to scrub it since we did the landings.”
We sat and talked, they gave us tea, grub, and handfuls of fags. A Big Liverpudlian, as I remember his name was Paul, said, “Did youse know the anagram of Salerno was ‘Narsole’?”
“I thought it was the other way round.”
The face of the helmsman showed white through the wheel house. Lunch was a mangled stew, lumps of gristle floating on the surface. Edgington said if you held your ear to it you could hear an old lady calling “Helppppp.”
The curtain of night is falling as we pass Argonaut-like in the shadow of Sicily. The sun, like a scarlet Communion host, dips into a horizon that is gossamer with mist; the wave-tops catch the last pink fading light, and reflect like a million flashing indicators. The night comes: we heard the Tannoy.
“This is the Captain speaking, there will be no naked lights, matches or cigarettes during hours of darkness. We are travelling through a known U-boat area. Will all officers ensure this order is carried out?”
Dinner was lunch four hours later and several degrees colder. I went below and Hackshaw scrounged me a bottle of beer.
“Where you been?” says Kidgell.
“In the galley.”
He leaps up, grabbed his mess-tins. “Is there more grub there, then?” he said, saliva pouring down his chin like Pavlov’s dogs.
It may be an illusion but night seemed to make the sea sound louder and lovelier. It even made Kidgell sound louder and lovelier. It wasn’t long before he was humming a little tune, and preparing his bed. Standing on top of his lorry made him look taller, it was the only thing that did. I had once asked him were all his family short, he said “Yes.”
I said “Why?” and he said, “Because they were frightened of heights.”
We watch a destroyer sending morse by lamp.
“Do you know,” I said, “Gunner Liddel thinks that Ash Wednesday is a Fourth Division football team?”
We laugh.
“Stop that noise, do you want the bloody German submarines to hear us?” says the voice of Edgington.
“He was laughing in German,” I explained.
We slide into our blankets. Doug and I converse on Cabbages and Kings, I can’t recall the dialogue, but I know we discussed where Alf Fildes would be (he was on his way from Malta we learned later). We also discussed our fears about Salerno. Like an omen, as we spoke, came the first distant boom of gunfire.
“Hear that?” said Doug.
“Yes, I heard it.”
Gradually, silences between exchanges became longer. I thought of home, would I see them all again? It all seemed so bloody mixed up. How did we ever let this happen? Had we challenged Hitler when he occupied the Saar, it would have been a pushover … too late now, chum, now he’s every bit as strong as us. … Stronger.
I was awake at first light, and I heard gunfire. I sat bolt upright, we were down to about three knots, very slow, granny-knots. We were pulling into the Bay of Salerno! All the beaches look remarkably peaceful. Good! we’d have a quiet landing. The still waters of the Bay were a carnival of ships, some 200, all shapes and sizes rode at anchor. The amazing American Amphibian DWKs were ferrying supplies ashore. Looming large among all this was HMS Valiant and HMS Warspite. Suddenly one let fly a devastating salvo which thundered around the bay and rocked the warship some fifteen degrees off her axis.
“That’s not going to do Jerry any good,” said a sailor and added. “It’s not doing the Warspite any good either.”
Lorries and guns coming ashore at Red Beach, Salerno. Note the man in the foreground with two broken forearms – now going for broken legs to get his ticket.
In the morning mistiness we make out hyper-activity on the beaches – lorries, tanks, half-tracks, beach-masters waving flags, pointing, lifting, lowering, signalling, shouting – all involved in the logistics of the war. The shells from Warspite were bursting inland on the hills behind Ponte-cagnano, which dominated the landing beaches. Why wasn’t Jerry replying? We drop anchor; immediately trouble, the chain has wrapped around the propeller shaft, fun and high jinks. We cheer as a diver goes down. A boat from the beach approached with a purple-faced Officer who shouted rude things through a bull-horn at our Captain, whose face incidentally showed white through the wheel house. To make it more difficult for our Captain, the destroyers lay a smoke-screen around us, and the Tannoy crackles: “Hello – click – buzz-crackle – it’s – click-buzz-crackle – later.” End of message.
“It’s all getting a bit silly,” said Harry. “All we had was the view and now that’s been bloody obscured!”
Now is the time for action! I take my trumpet from its case. There must be men still alive who remember the sound of “The Last Post” from the smoke-shrouded Boxer. The Tannoy crackles.
“Whoever is playing that bugle, please stop,” said a piqued Navy voice.
Salerno. 200 soldiers and sailors watch a lone black soldier pushing a lorry up the beach.
The anchor chain is finally freed. The smoke-screen lifts to show we are now facing away from the beach.
“They’re takin’ us back again,” says Gunner Devine.
“Of course not, you silly Gunner, no, the Captain has turned his ship around in the smoke to show us how clever he is.”
There are laconic cheers as the diver surfaces.
“Caught any fish?” someone says.
He holds up two fingers.
“Is that all?”
The engines start up again, the ship swings slowly round and points toward Italy, I mean he couldn’t miss it. Sub-Section Sergeants are going around telling us to “Get ready to disembark.” Drivers are unchaining the restraining cables that secure the vehicles to the deck. The day is now a delightful mixture of sun and a cool wind. The Warspite lets off another terrifying salvo. It thunders around the bay. We watch it erupt among the hills.
“That’ll make the bastards sit up,” says Sgt. “Jock” Wilson.
“I’d have thought”, I said, “it would have the opposite effect!”
“Oh hello, Spike,” he says. “How you bin enjoying the sea trip?”
“Well, Sarge, Yes and No.”
“Wot do ye mean Yes or No?”
“Well, Yes I am, and No I’m not, but mostly No I’m not, otherwise, Yes I am.”
He frowned. “You’ll never get promotion.”
Wilson was a Glaswegian, he was “Fitba” (Football) mad, and his family at home were hard put to it to send him all the news cuttings on the Scottish Matches*.
REGIMENTAL DIARY: HMS Boxer landed first party on Red Beach, Salerno Bay at 0940 hrs.
The ship touched the beach very gently, so gently I suspect it’s not insured. “Sorry about the bump, gentlemen,” said a chuckling Navy voice on the Tannoy. A cheer arose from the lads as the landing ramp was lowered. Another salvo from Warspite. At the same time an American supply ship starts to broadcast Bing Crosby singing “Pennies from Heaven” over its speakers. To our right, over the Sorrento peninsula, a German plane is flying very high; pinpoints of high bursting Ack-Ack shells trace his path.
Time 9.30. Sea calm.
The Tannoy crackles. Another coughing demo? No.
“Hello, is it on? – Hello, Captain Sullivan speaking.”
“Give us a song, Captain,” shouts Gunner White.
“Attention, will all men without vehicles, repeat, without vehicles, please disembark first?”
“I think I’m without vehicles,” I said to Harry.
“How about you?”
“No, I haven’t got vehicles, but they might be incubating,” says Edgington, who is, now that the sea is calm, back to his cheery self; the roses haven’t come back to his cheeks, but he tells me they’re on their way. “They have reached my knees and are due in me navel area this afternoon.”
The Tannoy: “Will men without vehicles disembark now?”
“We’ve been spoken for, Harry,” I said as we trundle down the gangways to the “Floor” of the Boxer. We were about to set foot on Italy. The jaws of the Boxer are opened on to a sunlit beach.
“I could never have afforded all this travel on my own,” I say. “It had to be the hard way, World War 2. I’ve always wanted to see Russia, I suppose that would mean World War 3.”
I don’t believe it, we were walking down the broad ramp on to the Salerno beaches, no bullets! no shells! and I didn’t even get my feet wet, as I leave my first footprint in the sand. I shout loudly “TAXI!”, and point in the direction it’s coming from. “The woods are full of them,” I add.
We move in a milling throng on to the beach. I start the sheep bleating and soon we are all at it, much to the amusement of the seamen watching from top deck. The scenery by L/Bdr. Milligan: the beaches are a mixture of volcanic ash and sand, the colour of milky coffee, it stretches left and right as far as the eye can see. Strewn along the beaches is the debris of a battle that had raged here; an occasional German long-range shell explodes in the bay. There are no hits. The beaches vary from twenty to thirty yards deep. Back from this is a mixture of pines, scrub, walnut trees and sand hillocks mounted with Tuffa grass. Bulldozers have made clearways flanked by white ribbons denoting them mine-free. There is activity the length and breadth of the shores. Great ammo dumps are, as we watch, getting higher and bigger. Just inland, Spitfires are refuelling and about to take off from a makeshift airstrip. American Aero-Cobras are revving their engines, turning into the wind and taking off in the direction of Naples.
We congregated by the sand hillocks, dumped our small kit and started to explore the area. Hard by was an American Lightning plane that had crash-landed half in the sea; a glimpse inside showed a blood-saturated cockpit. “He must be very anaemic by now,” said Sherwood. There are slit trenches everywhere, water bottles, helmets, empty ammo boxes, and spent-cartridge cases by the hundreds.
“Must have been a hot spot,” said Bdr. Fuller.
At the bottom of a trench I spot a Scots Guard cap badge, several pieces of human skull with hair attached, and a curling snapshot of two girls with an address somewhere in Streatham. I put it in my paybook intending to forward it to the address. We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. “Private Edwards, E.”, a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking, feeling, hoping. … If war was a game of cards, I’d say someone was cheating.
We pause now for Gunner Edgington’s recollections of the landing which go like this (stand well back). …
The scene as it met our eyes as we come up on deck very early that morning, with the ponderous old HMS Boxer leading the convoy and still some way off, the distant coast. It was barely dawn – mighty early – it was to be a fine day, though a touch of unaccustomed chilliness in the air. We had after all just come from North Africa – the sea calm, the elements indeed almost holding their breath – overhead the sky was fairly clear – but there, dead ahead of us was an awesome “Curtain up” setting of Salerno, a name which meant nothing to us at this juncture. [It did to me, I listened to the radio. S.M.] An hour later, the sun having fought his way into his kingdom [my God he’s waxing lyrical. S.M.] the incredible sight of a beautiful flat broad sandy beach, fringed some way back by tall grass over low dunes. Behind that, a great half moon of meadow-land with here and there large wooded areas … a spot that in other times might have been a secluded quiet paradise of nature … and yet, here raged war! For, as far as the eye could see along the beautiful coastline, a veritable armada of ships stood hull-to-hull, their prows to the beaches, disgorging soldiers and endless waves of sophisticated war-making machines. The activity that swarmed in unbelievably unhurried fashion, reminiscent of Hampstead Heath and the fairgrounds at Easter, had, as its musical accompaniment, the roar of great guns, the incessant racket of powerful vehicles and the cheerful shouts of men with megaphones yelling leisurely instructions to us all. As the Boxer’s great jaws opened slowly to the wondering gaze of us all standing within, we saw to our left a Spitfire [I thought it was an American Lightning] brewing up, flaming and smoking hideously, and past it on a grassy fringe a very tall slim flagpole, from its very top almost to its base a broad strip of red cloth fluttering … Red Beach!! [Well done, Harry, I’ll take over now. There’s a cheque in the post.]
We all stand well back far away from any work, and watch the confusion of unloading the vehicles. Officers and Sergeants are weaving back and forth saluting, shouting.
“What are they doing?” says Edgington.
“I think they’re trying to win the war,” I said.
“Why?” he said. “I’m satisfied with it as it is.”
Kidgell’s Scammell lorry is emerging from HMS Boxer. I ponder the logic that gives a driver five foot five inches a giant lorry to drive that necessitates him putting an orange box on the seat before he can see out. Gunner Devine has taken his boots and socks off and is paddling in the sea; an irate officer shouts at him, “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I think I’m paddling, sir,” was the reply.
“Paddling? This isn’t bloody Blackpool.”
“I know that, sir, Blackpool’s in England.”
“Get dressed at once and report to me!”
The officer stormed off. Well, almost! In turning he hurt his ankle. Next thing the khaki God of authority is hopping up and down, holding the injured limb, his face contorted with pain. He sees before him a sea of smiling gunners.
“You’re all on a charge,” he screamed.
“I think that’s a fair ending,” said Edgington, grinning at the departing cripple.
My God! Edgington was holding a mug of tea! How did he do it? He pointed to a tin brewing over a derv fire. Sgt. Mick Ryan comes across. He is dripping with sweat – was it fear of work?
“Come on, youse bloody signallers!” he points to a Scammell and a jack-knifed 7.2 gun well down in the sand.
We take the drag ropes and pull. The rest of the morning is a repetition of this. “Heave, steady,” etc. A naval officer in virgin-white uniform motors past in a jeep. He is tall, suntanned. He has the eyes of a man used to searching distant horizons, a handsome intelligent face and strong jaw and a mouth with the suggestion of a smile. The medals on his jacket told of his past heroisms. He was – how can I describe him? – a pain in the arse. Nice Lt. Budden is approaching.
“Hands up all the men who want to go to war!”
There is a massive negative response. He points at me.
“You. Milligan.”
This was victimisation!
“There must be some mistake, sir. I’m eighty-six and a cripple.”
He points. “Over there, 25-year-old liar.”
I clamber on to Sherwood’s bren carrier to be taken to a premature death. The carrier is overloaded, I perch on top. Budden sits in the passenger seat looking at maps. We roll across the sand hills; it’s not easy for me to stay on, so with consummate skill I fall off.
“Stop being silly now, Milligan,” says Mr Budden.
I remount. This time I jam myself between two kitbags. We reach a secondary road and – here comes the bonus – we pass the Temple of Neptune and Cerene, at Paestum, both looking beautiful in the sunlight. Strung from the Doric columns are lines of soldiers’ washing. At last they had been put to practical use. If only the ancient Greeks had known.
What the ancient Greeks didn’t know was that L/Bdr. Milligan had fallen off again! I got back on. This time I removed the kitbags, I climbed into the hole and they lowered the kitbags on top, leaving my head and shoulders free. I had appealed to Sherwood to drive slowly past the Temples.
“Wot Temples?”
“You’ll never get another chance to see them close at hand,” I said.
“You’re right,” he says. “You’ll never get another chance to see them again,” and he drove on.
Mr Budden has heard all this.
“Bombardier Sherwood is not of a scholastic mind, Milligan. He is a son of the soccer field. Had you said, ‘Slow down, Reading are playing the Mussolini Rovers’, I’m sure it would have touched a part of his English soul that is forever football boot.”
We have cleared the sand dunes, the minor roads, and have turned left on to the Battapaglia highway going north. We wait to allow some of the vehicles to catch up with us. There’s no sign.
“I suppose they’ve stopped to see the Temples,” grinned Sherwood.
The houses that line the road were two-storey, square, whitewashed. Hanging on the walls were strings of tomatoes. People sit outside on simple wood and rush chairs. The women were mostly bare-legged, wearing black clothes and wooden-soled sandals. Some pretty-faced girls look from the windows. A short fat middle-aged balding man runs across the road and gives us a bunch of purple grapes. He smiles and shakes his hand in a friendly gesture. “Viva Englise,” he says. I chew grapes and spit the pips at the neck of Sherwood.
Twenty minutes later our little convoy is complete.
“We are to establish an OP, somewhere up there,” Budden points to the mountainous country ahead.
I hated OPs; when they were quiet they were quiet, but when the shit was flying it was a dicey place. We pass several burnt-out tanks, mostly ours; that’s the trouble, Jerry had better tanks. We were trying to get away with superiority in numbers, very unfair on our tank crews. We never had any armour to match the Tiger, or the Jag Panther. The shades of night were falling fast as we went through Battapaglia past the ruins of the Tobacco factory that had been a bloodbath for both sides.
18 Battery negotiating a difficult road near Sipicciano; note sergeant in foreground, hoping lorry will run over him.
MY DIARY: TRAVELLING UP NARROW MOUNTAIN ROAD, FREQUENT STOPS TO LET FARM CATTLE GO PAST. MOUNTAINS EACH SIDE TOWERING OVER US, LIKE DAUMIER’S DRAWINGS IN DANTE’S PARADISE LOST.
Not only is Dante’s Paradise Lost, but we are bloody lost. Lt. Budden is looking studiously at his map, the wrong way up.
“It’s upside down, sir.”
“I know that, I turned it upside down for a reason.”
“Sorry, sir, only trying to help.”
“If you want to help, Milligan, act like a Basenji.”
Basenji? He’d got me. What was Basenji? A platoon of battle-weary soldiers are filtering past us to the rear. Their shoulder-flash reads QUEENS.
MY DIARY: OWING TO NON-ARRIVAL OF NO. 19 AND 21 WIRELESS SETS NO BATTERY OP CAN BE ESTABLISHED, ORDERED TO “STAND DOWN”.
Now to let you have the boredom of the Official History of the Regiment.
Their (19 Bty) position lay at the foot of Monte Mango, and was approached by means of roads little better than mountain tracks, worse indeed than any encountered in Africa. Yet by evening after a day of feverish activity [see? they even make the poor buggers work with a temperature. S.M.] and some quite unprincipled borrowing of equipment (cigarettes, chocolate, etc.) they were in action, and were immediately given the attention of Stukas.
Now Gunner Edgington recalls the first gun position. Action! Lights! Cameras!
I recall travelling on one of the Scammells as we went into action. We travelled fourteen miles I remember “The Dean”* saying, yet we found out later the “bridgehead” was only two miles in depth – it had been started just two weeks before, and though we didn’t know it then, Jerry was well advanced on the task of chucking us right out. One man, a certain Sergeant of our Battery by name of Michael “Bullprick” Ryan, was to completely reverse the situation almost single-handed!
We didn’t get moving till late in the day and then crept along an interminable, winding, tortuous course, until long after nightfall we came into an earth road between the giant trees of what seemed like a forest, except that they were set strangely in very orderly straight rows. There were smaller trees between them – apples? – lemons? – and running suspended along all of them, grapevines – all of them loaded with their fruit, fully ripe, for it was September.
No light but Budden’s torch – everyone inhibited from any noise that was avoidable – a hissed instruction, and the driver swung his wheel, the huge vehicle grinding slowly into the vines tearing great lengths of them away. The torches showed great puddles of what seemed like blood in the soft ryecorn-sprouting earth.
Trees – these giants carried masses of very fine walnuts – were dragged down by two Scammells arranged fan-wise to a particular tree with a powerful steel hawser running from one front winch-gear round the tree to the other’s front winch – a line of fire was cleared! Next morning, a raid – Spike and “Dook”, shaving, dive under a Scammell. Fire orders kept coming and kept getting cancelled. We could see Monte Stella through the trees – like a kid’s drawing of an alp – watched our infantry struggling on it – then the most incredible “shoot” of them all – Mick knocked the top clean off it with two rounds, sighting through the barrel a 7.2 howitzer aimed like a pistol!! Suddenly a great ragged mob of Hun fighter planes interceded, surging over the nearest crest, bellying down right over our tree tops, cannons going, though whether at us I know not.
19 Battery about to fire on Monte Stella, on which Jerry is perched. Man firing gun in off-white vest is Gunner Devine.
The moment after firing; idiot photographer failed to capture shell exploding on peak. Note driver with steering-wheel of bus lorry – the rest was stolen by Italians
Yes. I remembered being Stuka-ed, the evidence of this was a six-foot-deep trench at the bottom of which looking up white-faced and saying “Tell Hitler I’m sorry” was Lance-Bombardier Milligan. What did Basenji mean?
My slit-trench was in the angle of a farm-hut wall and a raised bank. All day Jerry 155mm shells were passing over our positions.
“They’re after the 25-pounders in the field behind us,” says Sgt. Ryan.
“Behind?” I said, turning yellow. “Christ, we’re far forward for heavies.”
“Forward?” he giggled. “We had bloody Nebelwurfers in this field this afternoon.”
Ryan had excelled himself. In the absence of an OP he had aligned his gun on Monte Mango by looking up the barrel, elevating it a bit above that, and by God, he was actually dropping the shells right on target.
I was surplus to requirements so I spent the afternoon writing letters, and eating handfuls of purple grapes that grew above my trench. I’d read about Conquerors partaking of the spoils of war. What I hadn’t read about was the terrifying attack of the shits that followed.
Dear Mum, Dad and Des.
We’ve been moved, I’m not allowed to say where. We had spaghetti for lunch. The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the Psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.
I am keeping well, we don’t go hungry in this war, the Compo Rations are very good, that’s if you get to the box first – this is the first day in this country, so I haven’t caught anything yet. I would welcome any books, periodicals and newspapers, preferably ones that say the war is over, and believe me the war is over … over here. I’m writing this in a hole in the ground, it’s convenient, because if you get killed, they just fill the hole in and sell it as a cemetery. That’s all the cheery news, will write again when the situation is a little less fraught.
Loving son, Terry.
I lit up a cigarette and lay back. Mind a blank. The guns roar, the night comes. Grapevine message, “Dinner”, across the field with mess-tins, I am walking on a field that has been laying fallow for a few years. One still feels the furrows where the plough once moved. In the corner of the field under some walnut trees, a heavily camouflaged cook-house is operating, and by the screams they are operating without an anaesthetic. In the queue I find Kidgell and Edgington.
“Where you been hiding?” is the merry greeting.
“Hiding? me hiding? that’s a malicious rumour, I haven’t been hiding. I have been standing on the peak of a mountain, swathed in a Union Jack, with a searchlight beaming on me and I have been crying ‘Come on you German swines, and feel the taste of British steel!’ Do you call that hiding?”
“That’s a load of cobblers.”
“Talking of cobblers,” says Kidgell, “wot are those terrible things floating in the stew?”
“Mines,” says our cook. “But don’t worry, they’re ours.”
It is a Maconochie Stew, and it tastes bloody marvellous. We sit with our backs against a bren carrier. The odd gun falls silent as the gun-teams take turns for their meal. It’s dark now, all around the unending roar of artillery. Odd rumours.
“They say he’s starting to pull out and our patrols are on the outskirts of Naples.”
“Cor, Naples, eh?”
We would all like to be in Naples. It would be the first European city since we left England nearly two years ago. We’ve all been warned of the “dangers”. If the brochure was telling the truth, venereal disease was walking the streets of Naples and one could contact it just by shaking hands with a priest. The BQMS has passed a message we won’t be getting any mail for a week, he says things like that to cheer himself up. Amid the gunfire we hear a droning, a lone plane, it’s Jerry, he drops a green flare. It was so pretty we all cheered when it came on.
“Milligan???? Milligan????” A voice is calling.
“Is that you mother?” I reply.
It’s Bombardier Fuller, he is saying, “Pack enough kit to last forty-eight hours, you’re goin’ up the OP.”
Enough to last forty-eight hours. Wearily I climb into Bdr. Sherwood’s bren carrier, already in it and waiting are Captain Sullivan, Signaller Birch and Bombardier Edwards. In a second carrier are Lt. Budden, Sig. Wenham; I cannot recall the Driver.
MY DIARY: GOT ON TO NARROW ROAD TO MANGO, ROAD JAMMED WITH VEHICLES, TWO TRUCKS AHEAD STRUCK BY JERRY MORTARS. STUCK FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS.
Progress is slow, road jammed with vehicles, very dark now, ahead is a glow of a large fire. Lt. Budden dismounts, he is coming towards us with a face that says Confusion Unlimited, and he appears to be the Managing Director.
“That’s the mountain there,” he points to a mountain that is so big it doesn’t need pointing to. Still I take his point. “We’ve got to get up that.”
“We need a ladder, sir.”
“How we going to get a bloody bren carrier up there?” says Birch.
“Post it.”
He tried to hit me.
“I’ll miss him.”
“Who?” says Birch.
“A helmsman whose face showed white through the wheel house.”
It’s really dark. We can hear the small arms fire. The crump of mortars is endless. What was Basenji? There is now a nose-to-tail traffic jam along a narrow walled lane; the red glow ahead is getting larger, and now owns the sky. Some walking wounded are squeezing past us on their way back.
“Wot’s happening?” I said to one of them.
“Jerry mortars, they set fire to the ammo truck – any minute now.”
He had hardly said it when there was an explosion and the random fireworks of the ammo going off showered the sky with sparks; it was great fun, and costing us a fortune. A Military Policeman is coming down the convoy.
“Back up, if you can,” he says, and laughs. We pass the message down the line, half an hour later we start to move backwards. A Despatch Rider is riding up from down behind us calling out “Any 19 Battery here? … Any 19 Battery here? …”
Birch says “Yes.”
Silly sod! Never answer anything in the Army, too late now. It’s Don R. Lawrence. He tells us we have to take the bren carrier and go back to pick up a wireless set which has just arrived from the beach, and Captain Sullivan on another truck is going to the OP, so we breathe a sigh of relief, we start extricating the bren carrier from the congestion, marvellous, when we’ve almost got it out the bloody thing breaks down, we struggle and manage to push it on to its side to allow the traffic through. Budden tells us, “We’ll have to walk to HQ and get fresh orders.”
I tell him I don’t need fresh orders, I’m perfectly satisfied with the ones I’ve got.
“Please, Milligan,” says Budden, “try and be a soldier.”
We finally reach RHQ. It’s off a walled lane in an Italian farmhouse, built around a forecourt two storeys high; an exterior staircase leads up to the first floor, which is surrounded by a balcony. The farm is blacked out except the room where our HQ is, that is a mass of light chinks coming from windows and doors like an early Son et Lumière. Several vehicles are parked in the forecourt. The drivers are asleep in the back. Twenty minutes pass. Mr Budden appears, he smells of Whisky, the khaki after-shave for men. He is much happier.
“We are not needed, Milligan,” he says.
“Does that mean for the duration?”
We both walk back to the gun position, which is easily found. We just followed the loudest bangs.
MY DIARY: COOL NIGHT, A TOUCH OF AUTUMN CHILL IN THE AIR. HAD VERY DISTURBED SLEEP. KEPT WAKING UP IN A COLD SWEAT, TOOK SWIG AT WATER BOTTLE, HAD A FAG. WHAT A BLOODY LIFE. I FINALLY DROPPED OFF INTO A BLACK SLEEP, LIKE DEATH. AM I THE BLACK SLEEP OF THE FAMILY?
I awoke at first light, sat up, yawned. I felt as tired as though I had not slept. A morning mist is rapidly disappearing. It swirls around the head of Monte Mango. I start the ritual of folding my blankets. A voice calls, “Hey, Terry.” Terry? I hadn’t been called that since I turned khaki. It was Reg Lake, a Captain in the Queen’s Regiment. He had been sleeping about thirty yards away. Reg was the pre-war manager of the New Era Rhythm Boys, one of the best semi-pro bands in London. He was the one who gave me my first break as a “crooner”. Last time I had seen him was on a 137 bus going from Brockley to Victoria.
Loading a 7.2 – to the right, Monte Stella; to the left, Monte Mango
“My God, Terry, what are you doing in this God-forsaken place?”
“I’m helping England win the war.” What a silly bloody question. “Reg,” I said, “or do I call you sir?”
“How long you been here?” he said.
“Came yesterday – I thought it was a day trip.”
“I was here on the landings, you missed all the fun.”
“I’ll try and make up for it.”
It was difficult to make conversation. I couldn’t say, “Where’s the band playing this week?” I asked what had happened to the boys in the band.
“All split up.”
“That must be painful.”
“Most of them are in the services – remember Tom the tenor player with only one lung? They took him.”
“They took me and I’ve only got two.”
He was called away by a Sergeant. I never saw him again, I’ve no idea if he survived the war. If he reads this book, I hope he gets in touch.
A voice is calling across the land, “Bombardier Milligan.”
“Bombardier Milligan is dead,” I call in a disguised voice.
The voice replied, “Then he’s going to miss breakfast.”
Good God! it’s nearly nine! I just get to the cookhouse in time to have the remains of powdered eggs, bacon and tea that appears to have been all cooked together.
“You slept late,” says Edgington.
“I’m training for sleeping sickness.”
We are now gathered around the Water Wagon doing our ablutions. Edgington is at the lather stage, peering into a mirror the size of a half crown propped on a mudguard. He was moving his face clockwise as he shaved. I had stripped to the waist, which brought cries of “Where are you?” I had my head under the tap enjoying the refreshing cascade of chlorinated cold water, at which time, twelve FW 109s are enjoying roaring out of the sun, guns hammering, there’s a God-awful scramble, we all meet under a lorry. I caught a glimpse of the planes as they launched their bombs on the 25-pounder regiment behind us.
“Look out,” warns Edgington, when the planes were half way back to base. He hurled himself face down. “All over.” We stand up. Edgington presented a face, half lather, dust and squashed grapes.
What was I laughing at? One moment I was well. Next moment I was on my knees vomiting. It was unbelievable. I became giddy, kept seeing stars and the Virgin Mary upside down.
“Report sick,” says Bombardier Fuller.
“You’re so kind,” I said.
They took me to the Doc, who said I had a temperature of 103.
“What have you been doing?” he said.
“I was washing, sir.”
Having a temperature of 103 allowed you to stop fighting. No but seriously, folks, I was ill! Oh I was ill!! The war would have to go on without me! In a bren carrier they took me shivering with ague to the Forward Dressing Station. It was a small tented area off a rough track; a Lance-Corporal, tall, thin with spectacles, took my details, tied a label on me, I think it was THIS WAY UP.
“That stretcher there,” he said.