Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (18 page)

Transcribed typed letter to Harry Edgington, June 13 1945

Calligraphy experts have described the handwriting as ‘critical’, and who are we to argue with qualified nursing sisters?

While waiting for LIAP, we continue to play for dances, but as the photo shows I have been promoted to the right, so I am within hitting distance of the pianist.

The new white jacket band on a cloth of gold, plus a moustache…

Notice too I have grown a moustache, brass players swear it: ‘bound the embouchure’. It made me swear, a
real
bloody bind, and shaving became difficult, but, you see, Robert Taylor had grown one and I couldn’t let him get away with it.

The Torch of Love is Extinguished

O
ne letter did it. Lily Dinley is getting married! That’s bad enough, but, to another
man
. That’s terrible. This was the girl I had carried a torch for. Though she had officially left me, I lived in hopes that one day she’d officially come back, if only to get the money I owed her. I prayed she would change her mind or her body; as long as the latter stayed the same shape as when I last saw it at 47 Revlon Road, Brockley — it was better than egg and chips. Anyway, her letter sent me into the depths of depression and when I arrived, no one was down there. This letter lets in the light for you dear dear readers. I’ve excised certain parts which would not interest you; they just contained certain private measurements.

Students of punctuation will be rolling on the floor.

BDR TA MILLIGAN

95_024

O BRANCH GHQ 2nd Echelon

CMF.

Dear Old Boy,

A thousand pardons for failing to write to you for so long…when I explain the reason you will understand only too well…Lily got maried about two month back, and I have been on the boose ever since…honest son, nothing ever hit me so hard…I worshipped that girl in my own peculiar fashion…lets forget it eh?. I suppose you have heard about the

[blanked]

well old Harry, I’m going home to Blighty in three weeks time…What are the chances of seeing you old son??? I will drop in and see you people in any case. Its raining oceans in Italy to day. Harry I well be hoping to settle down in N London after the war…(On my own) so i would like very much to be seeing a lot of you and your gang at my place (Where ever that is)…I don’t quite know what I’m going to do without Lily…..9 years is a long time to be in love with one girl…..Lets forget it…..I want you to give all the following PTO

[blanked]

NASH, and any that I may have forgotten. WELL
XXXX
Harry I am tn the dumps…I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do on leave…I have no bloody home to go to and the girl?…ha ha what bloody mockery life is…dont take any notice of the depression I8m laying on, write soon harry…

Your Sincere friend

Spike

Transcribed typed letter

But despite Lily, I was still writing to my harem in the UK- Beryl, Bette, Mae, Ivy; there were shortages in England, but not of this.

Zounds! It’s too much to believe. “The Band are to have a week’s leave in Rome,” says Major New. “It’s for the good work you’ve all done.”

I didn’t understand. We’d never done any work. As if this is not enough, dear reader, on the 23 July my life is enriched by the legacy of Startling Grope. He’s left orders that from this day henceforth I am to be promoted to Unpaid Acting Bombardier. No money, but I can put two stripes on my sleeve and I don’t have to curtsy to Sergeants any more. Startling Grope has his little joke, for one day later…I am now PAID BOMBARDIER!

“Someone has blundered,” says Sergeant Britton, who is now only one stripe ahead! I catch lovely long Captain Thelma Oxnevad. I show her my two stripes. “Any chance now?” I say, but before she can answer me I am laid low — not by illness, no, by treatment. Typhus inoculation. First shot.

“Roll your sleeve up,” said a Medical Orderly. “Just a little prick.”

I said I could see he was.

“Can you feel that?” he said.

“Yes, coming out the other side.”

He was well pleased.

Soon I’m in bed with a high temperature.

“Have you heard the news?” says Steve, holding up a paper.

I listen. I can’t hear anything. What’s he mean? I
am
the news.

“They’ve dropped the Atom Bomb.”

Very good Steve, but
who’s
dropped it on
who?
The Yanks! Of course! They’ve got the money. He held up the paper.

‘ATOM BOMB DROPPED IN HIROSHIMA’. I was delirious and really didn’t give a bugger. “It’s their own bloody fault,” I said.

August 9

DIARY:

BOOSTER INOCULATION

Ouchhhhhh! He was still a little prick. This time it was worse, a hundred and three temperature!

“At least you keep the room warm at night,” says Lewis.

Sadist! The Rev. Sergeant Beaton hears my groans and comes to minister the last rites. He’s disappointed, I’ll live. “Whisky in hot tea is good for yew.”

I buy a bottle — it’s good for me! And by the amount
he
drank, good for him. I have two doubles, then send out for hot tea. It’s a knockout. While I sleep, another plane is on its way to Nagasaki. By the time I wake the city is no more and the nature of war is to become a nightmare, something that I was just coming out of. I’m pouring with sweat. I feel like a wet rag but can’t find one anywhere. Nagasaki! That used to be the name of one of my favourite busking tunes!

Hot ginger and Dynamite

That’s all they get at night

Back in Nagasaki

Where the fellas chew t’baccy

And the women wiggy waggy woo.

I haven’t heard that song since. Amazing how one atom bomb can kill a song writer’s income.

I’m groggy in bed for a while. Steve is bringing my meals in, and eating them. “How do you feel?”

“Hungry.”

“That doesn’t leave much after tax,” he said, and I still don’t understand what he meant.

“Stop that bloody noise in there,” shouts the Rev. Sergeant Beaton. “We’re trying to meditate.”

“Sorry,” says Steve. “Let us know when it’s our turn.”

Roma Encore

T
he holiday with Scotland’s Revenge (porridge) and Links of Love (Slingers). All packed and puffing cigarettes, our lorry drives out of Alexander barracks in triumph. As we pass through the proles on their way to their offices, they boo us. “You wouldn’t ‘af to work if you’d learn the fiddle,” chortles Jim Manning. It’s a glorious day with a sky like Canaletto; unlike England where it’s like Cannelloni.

September 1

DIARY:

56 AREA REST CAMP. LOVELY LAZY DAY. SWIMMING, GRUB, PICTURES, PING-PONG.

The consensus is we go to a restaurant. We find one in the Via Forno, a lovely little trattoria with plastic grapes hanging from the ceiling, raffia-bound flasks hanging in clusters from the wall, and candles on the table. Several blue-chinned mafia-style waiters are waiting to serve, or murder us. It’s pasta all round, except for Jim Manning. He’s not going to ‘ ‘ave any of those long strips of garlic worms, no, it’s egg and chips’. Alright, we can laugh — eggs are good for you, they give you the ‘orn. I find a delightful red wine, Tignanello. Then two shillings a gallon, now £6 a bottle, I’m glad I ordered it then. We now rush rapidly to the next morning to avoid all that retching out of the back of the lorry.

Funny ha-ha reaction to the End of WWII by Bdr. Milligan — note modern frizz-top hair-do
. Left:
Vic Shewery;
right:
Jim Manning who volunteered to pose with me
.

Diary: September 2

T
errible hangover. Felt better after breakfast. Lovely sunny day. It is now ALL over: the Nips have jacked it in.

“The bastards,” said Jim Manning. “The bomb was too bloody good for ‘em — they should have dropped something cheaper, like gas stoves filled with shit.” What a thought.

The Romans ignore the Victory, the Allied soldiers get pissed, the City is full of stumbling, staggering, farting drunks, none of whom have ever seen a Jap. The rest camp leaves the latecomers a huge table of the latest greatest horror in British cuisine, the dreaded Cold Collation, each plate containing the following:

• Small part of cold dead chicken.
  
• One lettuce leaf brown at edges.
  
• One slice of tomato laid like wreath on dead chicken bit.
  
• Mess of diced stale boiled potatoes hiding under thin watery mayonnaise.
  
• Sprig of watercress.
  
• Thin slice of bread curling at edges as though about to fly off plate.
  
• Six pale peas glued together for security.
  
• A shrimp.
  
• Greasy thumbprint.
  

NIPPON DAILY NEWS

Emperor Hirohito hit by gas stove filled with shit. Western barbarians drop ultimate weapon. Despicable act without warning. No surrender. Antikarzi squadrons to intercept new hell weapon.

It was a warm night and we all knew who had had brown ale. “I think,” says Len Prosser, “if they’d dropped Cold Collation on Hiroshima it would have done more damage.” He’s right! After eating it, we surrendered.

There’s no lights out, so we play Pontoon. At one in the morning, from distant campanili, a series of one o’clocks ring out over the rooftops of Rome. One o’clock went on for a good seven minutes. We set our watches some twenty times.

“It must be different religions,” I said, “like the Protestants are three minutes behind the Greek Orthodox, and the Catholics one minute up on the Coptics.” They all say I’m a silly bugger.

“That’s it,” says a triumphant Jim Manning. “Pontoons only.” He scoops up the winnings.

I hadn’t done too badly, I’d come out with the same amount I’d had before the game, but then I hadn’t played -I’d had my fingers burnt before when someone set fire to the cards.

The days that followed were much the same. Monday, Tuesday etc. to the power of seven. Breakfast, lazing, swim, lunch, lazing, swim, cold collation, screaming, ping-pong, evening spruce up, Rome, sightseeing, pictures, dance, Trattoria, Alexander Club, pictures, cold collation, screaming, late night boozing, smoking, wanking, screaming.

Diary: September 6

L
ast day! MUST do something. Breakfast, lazing, swim, lunch, lazing, breakfast, cold collation, screaming, wanking, lunch — elephant strangling in rum (eh?). I’d found a great ‘Cinema Vérité’ film,
Città. Aperta
. No one wants to see it. “It’s in bleedin’ Iti, isn’t it?” says The Jim Manning. Yes, dear lad, would he like Cockney sub-titles? No — he’s going to have egg, chips and the horn. It’s a marvellous film, very, very moving, a wonderful performance by Aldo Fabrizi, and I came out depressed but elated.