Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (10 page)

American Red Cross Cinema and Lamppost

The Prodigal Returns

S
tanley Sir is back from the front (how’s that?). He’s heard that I’ve finished the Aquarium Club. “Major Rodes is very pleased.” So he should be, he didn’t have to do it. Stanley Sir points to the map of his tour. I was here, here and here. Not at the same time, surely. We were shelled here, and a German plane strafed us here. I told you not to play with those boys up the road.

‘
Wedding Bells are Ringing for Mary but not for Mary and Me’
(popular song, circa 1938)

Brigadier Henry Woods is in love! Who is she that will marry this World War I Worrier at the age of 104? Let Milligan tell all.

The story starts in Humphrey Bogart country, North Africa, land of the Bedouin, the Tuareg, the Clap. After the Torch landings, Henry Woods and his gallant band of clerks dash in and seize the offices, to assist the bureaucracy. He hires two sweaty blue-chinned Algerian Arabs and a French colonial girl, Mademoiselle Ding. They had all worked for Admiral Darlan before his assassination. Now they would work for Brigadier Woods before
his
assassination. The trio all speak fluent French and Arabic. When they move to Italy they come to speak to any Italians that spoke Arabic. By now Henry has fallen in love with Mademoiselle Ding! He proposes, she accepts. Soon they usher forth from the portals of St Michael’s Maddaloni. A guard of honour, clerks holding pens, form a bridal arch, the bells ring out, and the Honeymoon? Largo Como! There the happy couple dwell in bliss. But what’s this? One day Henry arises and what’s this? The bird has flown. “L’oiseau est partie.” Fancy, here in this miserable backwater Maddaloni, the Neasden of Italy, deceit and despair, he has been cuckolded! How? Well, one of the blue-chinned Algerians had a few months back asked for permission to visit his relatives in Paris, people like Laval, Petain, etc., so with all found paid and a khaki handshake, he departs. Could he be the ‘other’ man? Henry is suspicious. He sends Major Rodes and his hernia (yes, they still haven’t found the right doctor) to seek and kill. It is all as exciting as a B movie.

Algerian Sheik Sweeps Brigadier’s Wife From Under Nose of Husband

Major Rodes’ search leads him to Paris, and success. There at a table for deux, he finds Mademoiselle Ding and the Arab. Ah, if only the
Sun
could have got the story.

ENGLISH BRIGADIER MARRIES FRENCH ALGERIAN THIRTY YEARS YOUNGER

‘Age makes no difference,’ she says.

STOP PRESS: THIRTY YEARS YOUNGER

‘AGE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE’ BRIDE MISSING!

Thirty Years Younger French Bride Caught In Flagrante With Algerian Arab In Bedford Hotel Paris
.

“Age makes no difference,” she says.

BRIGADIER HAS ARAB’S BALLS CUT OFF

“Age makes no difference,” says Brigadier.

Thus Major Rodes brought his rupture and the sad story back.

October 9

MY DIARY:

BAND GIG IN ROME. WHOOPEE!

Rome! The Eternal City! Forever young! Age makes no difference here, unless you’re Henry Woods.

We travel by Welfare Charabanc. Early morning the charabanc arrives at Alexander Barracks. We eagerly pack our stuff aboard. Len Prosser is worried about the safety of his bass. In its canvas sack he appears to be smuggling a murdered body aboard. “The man who invented this instrument never intended it to travel — it’s meant for hermits or the transfixed.” Drums. Vic Shewry is coming and going. Percussion seems unending. “When you two have finished we’d like to bloody well get on,” says Jim Manning and his alto sax. Up and away a hundred and fifty miles to go, so a cigarette and the Union Jack and I settle back. The Allies are driving the Germans back over the Po River. It must be hard on German mothers to receive telegrams:

Hitlergram No. Sieben

ZER FÜHRER REGRETS TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON HAZ BEEN DROWNED IN ZER PO.

Through ancient Capua, over the Volturno, Sparanise, Teano; all the roads I’d passed through in action. Memories of 19 Battery, the sound of the guns, the shout of fire orders, now all passing into the dreamtime. Through Cassino, and above it the ruined abbey, a monument to Allied stupidity. We rabbit, joke and laugh our way. Come evening we reach our destination. ‘56 Area Rest Camp Welcomes You’. It’s like Belsen with food.

“This is yours,” says a lumpy Corporal, opening the door of a Nissen hut. It is a paradise of wooden beds and blankets!

“So,” says Len Prosser with an expansive gesture, “
this
is Broadway!”

We get comfortable, try the beds for lumps. QMS Ward is to speak.

He holds up a hand like Custer halting the 7
th
Cavalry. “Ye-o-oh.” He reads from a stained paper. “The first gig is tomorrow, Crusaders Officers’ Club, leave here 1900 hours, best battledress.”

We have the evening to ourselves. Ah! The Alexander Club! We walk out in the sunlit wide streets; people here in no way resemble their grotty cousins in Naples. Lots of pretty girls. On the Via XX September we find the Alexander Club. It is a massive modern concrete and glass horror, a sort of Orson Wells of architecture. Inside a milling sea of squaddies, a cacophony of rattling plates, cups, knives, forks and spoons; it sounds like Lyons Corner House going over Niagara Falls. “Christ!” says Jim Manning. “Aren’t there any bleedin’ soldiers at the front?” He’s wrong. We join a queue for tea and
all
the soldiers are at the front. It winds back two hundred yards. We look like the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. Tea, buns, fags; fags, buns, tea; buns, tea, fags. Opposite the Alexander is a chrome and glass Italian barber’s. Smart glossy-haired white-jacketed Largo Factotums are in attendance. Len and I are grovelled into our foot-operated adjustable chairs, crisp white sheets are tucked around our necks. I had never savoured the delights of an Italian shave, and now he was whisking up the lather like an egg white. I hadn’t seen such manual dexterity since Mademoiselle Fifi le Toof of the Cages, Bombay. With a chamois leather cloth he cleans my skin with an astringent. With fast revolving circles he lathers me with an aromatic soap made from almond oil. It’s all too good for me. Honing a razor on a black leather strap, he gently scrapes upwards, the bristles falling in hundreds. He feels for any areas he has missed and plies the blade over them, repeating the whole process twice. It’s all done with a marvellous rhythmic precision, the blade so sharp that there is no pulling or tearing of the skin. A glance in the mirror, no shaving soap remains. Now he applies hot towels that he juggles from hand to hand to release the heat. The face is enveloped and the smell of cologne rises with the steam. This done, an ice cold astringent is patted on to the skin. It’s taken twenty-five minutes. We have seen a great artist at work. Len has asked his to marry him. My face feels like fine velvet; I am reeking of a cologne that will make a woman rip her clothes off at fifty paces. I must hurry on to the streets before it wears off.

L./Bdr. L. Prosser and Gunner T. Milligan. After being shaved, they are waiting at the Fountain of the Naiads for a good trouser press
.

* this man is now in America somewhere

What to do? It’s only seven of the clock. We look at our
Soldier’s Guide to Rome —