Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (19 page)

I hie me to the Alexander Club, and there pleasure myself with choice teas and buns. A ‘Naafi’ pianist is playing, an assassination job; he does for music what Dracula did for anaemia. I stand and listen to the horror and realize what a good thing assassination is. To recover I have a carafe of wine and head for home.

Outside the streets are bright, shops are open late, streets bustle with night life. I’m looking in a ladies’ lingerie shop with my memories. A voice behind me. “Are you looking for a dirty girl?” It’s a very beautiful thirty-year-old female.

No, I wasn’t looking for a dirty girl, I was looking for some clean underwear. She smiled a ravishing smile and showed teeth as white as piano keys. She looked at me with huge brown eyes, a stunner. I had never been accosted before, I didn’t know what to say; this was real men’s stuff. My mother said I never should play with the gypsies in the wood. To hell with that.

Her name is Maria Marini (all gypsies not in the wood in Italy are called Maria). A high degree of naughty was possible! I asked her why she had chosen me. I looked kind. Kind? What kind? Her words: “You looka nice.” The bottom drops out of the naughty when she tells me she’s
not
a tart,
this
is the first time! Why, dear girl, are you doing this dreadful thing? Doesn’t she know I’m trying to cure myself of Cold Collation, screaming and wanking? She’s a teacher from the University of Milan, she was holidaying in Rome when the Germans put a curfew on all civilian movements. She was broke and desperate. I said so was I, I’d just had egg and chips. A friend had suggested there were two ways to make money, tarting or counterfeiting. Both ways you get fucked. When we got to her small but tidy flat overlooking the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (all Basilicas not called Franco are called Maria in Italy), she broke down. Should I call the AA? I couldn’t bring myself to do it folks. I slept on that sofa!

After a good night’s Cold Collation and somnambulism, she brings me coffee and a slice of cake. I would have done better at the Rest Camp! “Ta for not shagging me, now can I have the money,” she says, in so many words. She has thought twice about it, she wants me to stay! Has she caught a glimpse of it in the night? “I ken be lak a waf to you,” she says. “I ken cock for you.” Well, I’d love her to cock for me, but I have to leave — the people in Maddaloni are dancing to a man banging a dustbin lid as he whistles. Will I write to her? Yes, and send soap, chocolate and a few million lire. She will wait for me. As I leave she grabs me, kisses me, then slams the door on my fingers. I return to the camp with a bandaged hand and am greeted with, “Did she ‘ave barbed wire round it?” Tell them all, every sordid little detail.

I upgraded the story. She was a distressed Countess, she wanted me to live with her. Corrrrrrrr! I could be the distressed Count. You count. She made me dress as Mussolini and make love to her! Corrrr! I wrote to Maria for nearly two years and I met her again in Volume VI (Order your copy now — due 1986).

September 6

I
t’s back to Maddaloni and straight into the Junior Ranks Dance. The ATS are allowed to wear dresses, frocks, and what look like broken army blankets stitched together with boot laces. At the door they are all given a flower. The lighting would have done credit to any swish night club, and so much food and drink seemed evil. We play some new arrangements; including ‘Star Eyes’ which was great; here I am seen at my pristine best playing the muted Trumpet solo.

Playing ‘Star Eyes’. My eyes are closed to avoid seeing any Cold Collation
.

The dance contest is to be ‘judged’ by Brigadier Henry Woods CBE, which is no worse than Mary Whitehouse choosing the best porno movie. Groans follow his every decision but he goes merrily on giving marks for the dancer with the ‘best haircut’ in the Waltz, and ‘best-polished shoes’ in the Quick Step. It’s the biggest debacle since Dunkirk. By some miracle Rosetta Page wins the spot prize — she’s covered in them. In my white Harry James jacket, dyed black trousers, bandaged hand and moustache, I manage to get the last waltz.

“What happened to your hand, Spike?”

I caught it on some barbed wire, I tell her. “I’m going on leave. Will you miss me?” Of course she will, she makes a point of it.

A letter from a girlfriend, Beryl Southby, sends me news of a song contest being held at the Hammersmith Palais by Oscar Rabin. Immediately I am George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. I see myself at a lonely piano on a grouse moor in pouring rain. Lit by a hurricane lamp, I am dressed as a damp Chopin. All through the tempest I cough blood, sip lemon tea and write a masterpiece of a tune called ‘Dream Girl’. I write to my friend Gunner Edgington in distant Holland telling of my composition, a tune that is a sinecure for the depressed; one chorus will cure love sickness, two will stop varicose veins, three will prevent scrofula and psoriasis. The first prize is a thousand pounds. A thousand pounds; think what I could do with that! For a start, I could spend it. I send the song off. “Dear Oscar, herewith the winner, signed Bombardier Milligan S.”

That was in 1945…perhaps the post is slow. The winning song was ‘Twitty Twitty Twink Twink means I love you’. Now you know what’s wrong with the bloody country. At the time I
didn’t
know what was wrong with the country, other than there was a great shortage. I for one wasn’t getting enough of it.

Little Bits of Useless Information

I
had started to write essays (Essay, essay, essay, Who was that lady I saw you with last night…); these essays weren’t, like Lamb’s, they were like Mutton. One was on the death mask of a young girl found drowned in the Seine in 1899. I was haunted by the smile on the dead girl’s face. Where else did I expect to see it? In an Essay Contest run by Corporal Hewitt, I won nothing. I’ve kept it secret until now, under the Thirty-Year Release of Information for the Security of the Nation Act.

A Trifle

E
very morning a pretty Italian girl passed our office window. I would say ‘Buon Giorno’ to her through the bars of my window, and she would throw bread to me. I did this drawing of her, now released under the Release of Information for the Security of the Nation Act.

One morning as I called to her, she burst into tears. What was wrong? Len Arrowsmith, married man, father and lecher, tells me. “It’s possibly the menstrual cycle.” Oh, I thought that was a ladies’ bike. They say you live and learn. Well I didn’t. It was my tenth day without Cold Collation.

September 27

DIARY:

SERGEANTS’ MESS DANCE. RAINING

I was so excited at the prospect of UK leave that my swonicles were revolving at speed. Like a fool I thought I was going back to 1939. I’m still trying to get back to 1939. That was the best time. It all lay ahead of you. Now it’s all behind and I don’t want to look back. A letter from my mother tells me I have no home to come to. Her and dad are renting the ground floor of 40 Meadow Way, Woodhatch, Reigate at twenty-seven separate shillings to be paid at once to the landlady. Rations are short, they have eaten the couch. “Your father has left the army and is working at the Associated Press in Fleet Street. If you come, you’ll have to sleep in the box room on dad’s officer’s camp bed.” A camp bed! — a home fit for homosexuals. Brother is ‘in Germany’. By order of the King of England he is hitting refugees who try to nick food.

I must hurry, Mother, for I’m to be Queen of the Ball. The Sergeants are preparing for my last trumpet solo before my leave. I must look my best for them. In my scratched steel mirror, I look lovely. It’s a short walk from my room, through the Sergeant Rev. Beaton’s chapel, across the connecting covered way to the Dance Hall. I’m early and I tinkle the piano. Steve Lewis is early, too — that way he avoids paying.

I’m playing a Beguine.

“Is that yours?” he says.

The song yes, the piano no.

“I’ve never heard you play it before.”

“I always play it before, never after.”

We had been wanting to put on a musical about British soldiers transported back to Roman times. The tune I was playing was called Roman Girl.

You can see ‘em At the Colosseum

Watching their favourite gladiators

In the arena

There’s a hyena

Eating Christians with his friends the alligators.

There were other songs we’d prepared but owing to unforeseen circumstances, which we could not foresee coming, the show never got off the ground. Another day without Cold Collation.

The dance begins. I feel great! I sing every song, play every chorus, blow louder and longer than ever before. It was to bring about my demise, however, for watching me all the while with his beady little eyes was Brigadier Henry Woods CBE, hating every note I played. He sent up a message by Major New to tell me to ‘play quieter’. I told him if they wanted a quieter trumpet player, they should indent for one, or dance further away. Fuming, the little Brigadier passed the stand with the face of an executioner. He fixed me with his ‘You are for it’ stare, then tripped. I laughed. It was my death sentence.

Bdr. Milligan singing louder than has ever sung before and causing the photograph to crumble

SERGANTS MESS DANCE

The very thorough resuscitator of the Seageants Mess danses, Sgt (now Mr.) T.E. Finucane, who made such a big success of the one just before he left for home, will be no little pleased when he learns that these affairs are carrying on along the lines he laid down and that a long and pleasant run of them seems assured. He spent much time coaching his buddy, the effervescent sports-maker, CSMI Rigg, on what to do and it was done, thoroughly. Not being quite so much a gala affair as the farewell to T.E. Finucane, Esq., rather fewer sweet young things from outside descended on the Alexander Barracks ballroom on Thursday, September 27
th
, buth there was a very fair representation to reinforce our own ATS, and rea ly bonnie the home and back o’ beyend forces looked in their pretty dresses.

An innovation much appreciated by the ladies was the installation of a large box of flowers at the entrance, from each eas invited to select a posey. Stan Britton’s O2E Dance Band was on the top of its form and played with a rare swing througout the evening.
Very much in evidence was ‘Spike’ Milligan (now also ‘Young Sapling’), making his last appearance before departing on LIAP. Of course, his inevitable trumpet was
his principal weapon, but he also triumphed as a vocalist, adding much to general gaiety. Sgt. Vera Smith, of our own ATS, and Len Prosser also obliged with vocal contributions. The lady established herself as a prime favourite and a few more

Hail the Chief