Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (10 page)

By the time that the matter had been sorted out, tempers were frayed and feeling was running high. It took some laughing off, but a personal visit by the C.O. to the War Office the following day succeeded in allaying the storm. It is an interview that few of us would have cared to undertake personally.

I think I can now safely reveal that the signal was sent by 954024, Gunner Milligan.

A 7 2 dun howitzer as seen from the receiving end

I was alone in a fifty-acre field

SPORTS

I
nvitations to join the Battery boxing team had fallen flat. We had one professional, Sergeant Conroy, but he wasn’t going to do any boxing, oh no, he was, to quote him, going to “Pluck another Jimmy Wilde from our ranks.” He plucked Lofty Andrews, a bean pole, six-foot one, with a pigeon-chest. Conroy explained: “This lad is God’s gift to me, he’s as tall as a heavy-weight, with the same reach and he only weighs eight stone! Now boxers at that weight are usually only five-foot-six. Don’t you see? With Lofty’s reach, they won’t get near him!” But before that, the Battery were to have another champion. Southern Command Sports were coming up. One of our competitors was Gunner Alexander Naze who had entered for the high jump. This puzzled us. He was the most unathletic person I’d ever met. Such was his confidence, he never trained. Came the day and Bexhill Sports Ground was crammed with shouting soldiers and things. The weather was perfect, sunny, warm, with a delightful cool, salt-scented breeze from the Channel. The grass was a fresh cut green. How can people have wars! Among the contestants were professional athletes from pre-service days; some Canadian high jumpers were clearing the bar at five-foot-eight just as a warm up! To date, no sign of Gunner Naze. Then we saw it. Issuing from under the stands was a figure. It was wearing a red hooped football jersey, elastic-waisted blue military P.T. shorts that reach just below the knee, grey army socks dangling round his ankles and white, slightly over-large plimsolls. He ran in a series of peculiar little bounds and leaps, flicking his feet behind him, which I thought was some sort of expertise muscle-loosening exercise. He was blissfully unaware of the comparison his comic garb made with his sleek-muscled professionally-clad opponents. By then he had arrived at the jump-off; the warming up had been terminated. The official had taken down the bar and temporarily rested it at the three foot level…Naze eyed it…He walked some hundred yards from the bar, then turned and started to run. It wasn’t until he was half-way there we realised he intended to jump. He gathered a sort of lumbering momentum but never got faster…finally reaching his goal, he launched himself into a schoolboy ‘double-your-legs-under-you’ style jump and
just
managed to clear it. He seemed well pleased, unconscious of the puzzled look that followed his effort. Came time for the jump off. An official signalled Naze and asked him if he was competing. Naze nodded. Naze walked twenty yards away, turned, and now saw that the officials had set the bar at five foot. For the first time he looked worried. He walked back a further fifty yards. He started his approach. The stadium fell quiet as the great athlete bounded across the grass. We all felt that something unusual was about to happen. On and on he came, making little clenching gestures with his hands…he reached the bar and with a triumphant shout of “Hoi Hup la!” and an almighty effort he hurled himself upwards. The bar broke across his forehead. Cheering broke out from the stands. Gunner Naze kept running, he left the field, he left the stadium, he left athletics. Our next hope of a champion was the as yet untested Lofty Andrews.

20 ELIMINATION BOUTS!!

PROCEEDS TO THE ARMY BENEVOLENT FUND

SEATS 6d, 2/6, 3/-, 5/- .

The notice was pinned below the ticket office window in the foyer of the De La Warr Pavillion. “Hurry-a-long, first fight starts in minutes five—minutes five,” said Sergeant Balcon in his best voice. He was a strange-looking fellow, his eyes very close together, his nose and ears so large they appeared to be trying to outgrow each other. He spoke with that sound peculiar to the cockney larynx, when it tries to speak posh. To obtain this metallic sound, you press the chin down on to the throat, applying slight pressure to the Adam’s apple, you purse the lips, the lower one slightly protruding, tense the tongue lay it flat in the well between the lower teeth and say ‘Yew’.

Troops were rolling in; I sat thirteen rows back, between Gunners Devine and White, Devine being no mean brawler himself. “Why aren’t you fightin’ tonight, Devine?” asked Captain Martin. “They won’t let you use your head sir,” said Devine, going through the motion of nutting an opponent. The hall was packed, and a great carillon of voices filled the ear. Cigarette smoke wafted upwards from two thousand throats, and hung like a pall in the still air. Old scores were being settled with balls of paper flicked at the backs of unsuspecting N.C.O.s’ necks. Men were standing shouting to men in other rows. Bombardier Rossi was taking bets in the tense region of two shillings. The last of the officers were sauntering in, flushed with hurried whiskies. They were greeted with cheers or raspberries according to their popularity rating.

Now came guest of honour, Lieutenant-Colonel Harding. No sooner had we all sat down, when came the National Anthem, and very strangely. It was being played by Gunner Edgington on a piano from the stage behind vast heavy velvet curtains that acted as a baffle. As the first tinklings of the Anthem permeated the babble, it was a rare sight to see 2,000 soldiers in various stages of patriotic uncertainty, those nearest could hear and were at attention, those in the middle were somewhere in between sitting and hovering in the half upright, while those farthest away heard nothing and sat looking puzzled at the confusion around them.

“Wot’s going on?”

“Stand up, it’s the Nash-i-nole Anfem!”

“I can’t ‘ear it.”

“It’s behind the curtain!”

“What’s behind the curtains?”

“The Nash-i-nole fuckin’ Anfem!”

To try and weld the confused mass into one coherent whole, Colonel Harding started to sing ‘Send him vic-tor-rious, happy’ etc., etc. He was joined by a few promotion-seeking officers. At the end, the small band of brave singers were given a tremendous ovation with shouts of encore enriched with farts. Edgington, thinking the applause was for him, appeared grinning through the curtain, a waste of time, as the house lights went off, blacking him out.

The ring now stood candescent in the floods, the light bouncing off the taut white ropes. Two miserable looking boxers sat in their corners, with towels draped over their shoulders. R.S.M. Warburton, scrubbed, gleaming in crisp S.D., tight at the neck, climbed into the canvas arena, his hair grease glistening in the lights, his brass buttons flashing. Referring to a card, he spoke in a voice like prodding bayonets, “Mi-Lords! Lay-does! and gentlemen!!!” A voice from the dark shouts, “Go home, you Welsh bull shiner!” Warburton machineguns the crowd with his eyes. “Gentlemen, please! The first fight on your programme is a fly-weight contest of three three-minutes rounds. At the weigh-in, Reynolds, in the red corner, weighed eight stone, two pounds!”

“Give the poor sod some grub!”

“Gentlemen, please!” This R.S.M. versus the rest continued until Warburton left the ring. The first three fights went through their thudding, sweating, grunting course—the animal in the crowd had been released, and tension lessened. Now came the bout we had come to see. “In the red corner, from D Battery, fifty six, fife-six-er Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery, Gunner Andrews.” We cheered as Lofty stood. But the sight of his skinny body, with shoulder blades protruding from his back like wings, didn’t look very promising. At the sight of him Bombardier Rossi’s odds changed dramatically: he refused to take bets. In the opposite corner sat a red thing called Rifleman G. Motts. He was five-foot-six, covered in muscles, hair, scars, and tattoos of snakes disappearing into every orifice. Under neolithic brows, two evil black eyes stared out from hair which grew on his forehead. There was no neck, the head seemingly joined to the shoulders by the lobes of his ears. At the first sight of this creature Lofty tried to scramble out of the ring. “I’m not fightin’ that until I ‘ear it tork,” said Lofty.

“Don’t let appearances fool you,” smoothed Conroy.

“They haven’t,” said Lofty.

“Seconds out, first round!”

The two grossly ill-matched contestants approach each other. The Bexhill air raid sirens went. Lofty, a nervous lad, immediately took cover lying face down on the canvas. The referee was puzzled. “You all right lad?” he said to the figure on the canvas.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to stand up, or I’ll start counting you out.” Lofty looked to Conroy for professional advice. He got it. “Get up you silly cunt.” The remark was lost in the booing and jeering in true British sporting fashion. Lofty rose, the fight continued. Another disaster. The lights fused. More uproar and whistling. The lights went up. The referee was unconscious on the canvas. Lofty went to pick him up. Motts, seizing the opportunity, let go with a hay-maker that connected with Lofty’s cheek and down he went. The bell went. Conroy dragged Lofty to his corner. R.S.M. Warburton dragged the referee out of the ring. The lights went out again. The bell for the second round. Someone in Motts’s corner struck a match. The lights went on again. Lofty was still sitting on his stool and was crying.

“The rotten sod ‘it me when I wasn’t looking,” he sobbed.

Conroy threw in the towel, and Lofty joined Naze in retirement. It wasn’t the end. Lofty waited outside, and when Motts appeared, kicked him in the cobblers; then ran. I suppose you’d call it a draw.

Next, Rugby! Sergeant Griffiths fished around for players, rather, volunteers. In a hammer lock, I admitted I’d played stand-off for my Convent. Using threats he got together a scratch team. Our opponents were The Sussex Regiment. As they took the field, an uneasy feeling went through me. Each one was six foot and fourteen stone. It transpired that they were convicts who were given remission provided they joined the army. And now, we were going to pay for it. We won the toss but that’s all. Griffiths kicked off. It was the last legitimate move of the game. From then on it was massacre. In the terrible scrums our hooker had his ears reduced to red flaps. In the rucks, our shins were kicked black. In the loose they tackled anyone, even each other. Their hand-offs were like walking into steel girders. The field rang to our screams. By half time, we were fifteen gibbering things, running white with fear and hiding on the crossbar. “Milligan! Come down at once you cowardly bugger,” said tariff.

“They’re not ‘umen, Sarge,” whined sixteen-stone Tiny Vickers, “I got a wife and kids to think of.”

“Right, think of ‘em while you’re playing,” said Griff.

The second half saw the end. In a moment of insanity, one of us had got the ball and was immediately crushed to the ground under. six hundredweight of steaming beef. The brute I’d pounced on shot back his elbows, catching me flush under each eye. When I came to, I lay in a shallow, muddy grave. I looked up, play was at the far end and coming my way! “For Christ’s sake don’t get up!” screamed Griff, “or you’ll put us all off side.” I waited no more: I ran for my life, and hid under the stands.

I never played again. Nobody should. Rugby is for watching.

Gunner Naze about to commence has famous jump