Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (6 page)

“Oh, Christ!” said Devine, “we’re going to be bombed and gassed.”

“Thank God! I couldn’t stand this all again.”

“Come on,” urged Dawson, “don’t fuck about.” My Mickey Mouse watch↓ said 3.30 a.m.! Christ!

≡ I won this by entering a colouring contest in
Mickey Mouse Weekly!
I put my age down as eleven and won a prize.

We were trooped into the Naffi Hut, faceless in gas masks, cocooned in gas capes, the epitome of Military Efficiency. Nobody knew who was who. What must have been the B.S.M. held up the nominal roll board and was calling the names out when he realised he couldn’t be heard. He raised the gas mask and started to re-call the roll: we answered but likewise, in turn, we couldn’t lie heard. Captain Martin, who’d had enough, took off his mask: “All take your masks off or we’ll be here all bloody night.”

The roll was called.

“Right! gas masks on again!”

We all stood like dummies. We could hear no planes. Several minutes passed. B.S.M. slipped his mask up: “Stand at Ease.” We stood at ease. Several more minutes passed. Leather Suitcase arrived on the scene looking flushed and pissed with his pyjamas showing out of the bottoms of his trousers. For his benefit B.S.M. called the roll again. There we stood. This was our first air-raid warning. It became evident that, having roused us, nobody quite knew what to do with us. Sirens were going the length of the South Coast. “It’s all Bexhill’s bloody fault,” said Chalky White. Eventually the eye-pieces on Suitcase’s gas mask steamed up: he removed it and looked at his watch. “Well, I think that’s enough,” he said. “Parade dismiss Sarn’t-Major,” and we all trooped off to bed.

Sergeant Harris’s method of smuggling tinned food through the British Lines at Bexhill

APPLICATION FOR RAF PILOT

A
bout now, of course, the heroes of the war were the R.A.F. Pilots. It made you green with envy on leave. All the beautiful birds went out with pilots. I couldn’t stand it any more. I volunteered for the Air Force. I had to be interviewed by Leather Suitcase.

“I hear you want a transfer, Milligan.”

“Yes sir, I want to join the R.A.F.”

“Ah yes, those are the ones that fly.”

“Yes sir, they go up whereas we just go along.”

“Have you ever flown before?”

“No sir, but I’ve been upstairs on a bus on my own.”

“No, what I said was, have you ever flown before. I didn’t say anything about buses.”

“No sir, I have never flown before.”

“Your father has written to me about it, and I will recommend you for a transfer.”

In February 1941 I was called for an interview to Kingsway House. I waited in a room with about forty other hopefuls. After an hour I was called before a man who appeared to be wearing a pair of hairy outstretched wings under his nose.

“.I see you want to join the R.A.F.”

“Yes, sir, I have the character and temperament that is admirably suited to that arm.”

“What would you like to be.”

“A pilot, sir.”

“Want to go out with pretty girls, eh?”

After a stringent Physical Examination they told me. “Sorry, your eyesight isn’t up to what we need for a pilot; however, we have a number of vacancies for rear gunners.”

“No sir, I don’t want to be at the back, I want to drive.”

“I’m sorry lad, that’s all we can offer you.”

Letter from my major to my father

I stood up, saluted smartly and exited. As I walked down the corridor to the street, I saw what was possibly the ugliest W.A.A.F. I had ever seen. “Hello cheeky,” she said as I passed her. Perhaps they were right, perhaps I had got bad eyesight. I caught an evening train back to Bexhill, and arrived to be informed by Edgington that he had read in the
Melody Maker
that Harry Parry, of the BBC Radio Rhythm Club, was holding auditions to find the best unknown jazz musicians—the winners were to make a recording for. broadcasting on the BBC. We wrote off to Harry Parry, c/o BBC, London. We received a reply saying could we come down on the next weekend. We approached Leather Suitcase.

“You’re going to do what?”

“Do an audition for the BBC.”

“You can’t join them! They’re civvies!”

I explained as best I could to him, bearing in mind that contemporary opinion of jazz in those days was almost the same as that of cannabis today. However, he let me go, and the following weekend, excited out of my mind, I arrived at BBC Studios, Maida Vale. Briefly, I was picked as the best trumpet player, and along with the winning alto, trombone and tenor players, we cut a disc. The pianist for this was the then almost unknown George Shearing, and for an hour, along with Harry Parry, we recorded six sides. It was an unforgettable day for me. I felt that I had been accepted as a jazz musician, and before I left, George Shearing said, “I hope we meet and play again.” Man, that was praise enough.

NIGHT OF THE FIRE RAIDS

T
he night of September 7
th
, 1940, Harry and I went to the Playhouse Cinema in Western Road. It was ‘Black Moonlight’ with Anton Walbrook, Terence de Marney and the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto.

When we came out the night was filled with what sounded like relays of German bombers headed inland. There was remarkably little Ack Ack to deter them. Cloud was low and most of the antiaircraft batteries were further inland, grouped around strategic cities. After a quick drink in The Devonshire we ended up at the Forces Corner to finish off the evening. I started chatting up the birds, one especially, Betty Aspnel, a plain girl who made up for it with a sensational figure, man has to be satisfied with his lot, and man! this girl had the lot. I tried to create an atmosphere of Caviar and Champagne while eating beans on toast with tea. The things soldiers did to impress girls.

A gunner, with a tremendous Welsh accent, tried to make a girl believe he was an American millionaire who had thrown in his lot with the British Army. It was something to hear him say “Gee whizz baby, ain’t I lucky to have joined the little old British Army. Shucks, if I hadn’t I’d never have met you,” with a Cardiff accent. Harry wandered up to the piano and started to play a few tunes. One of the W.V.S. girls who was serving sidled up to the piano. She was the daughter of a retired Admiral in Cooden Road. She was tall and beautiful with a County School Accent. “Can you play ‘Foolish Things’?” Harry complied. At first she only hummed the tune, then started to sing. Christ! She sang a quarter tone flat the whole way through. I caught Harry’s eye…he was suffering. Always a gentleman, Harry, at the end of her effort said, “Lovely.” Encouraged, she said “Do you know ‘A Pair of Silver Wings’?” Harry did. At that moment he wished he had a pair. He had to sit through some seven songs, agonisingly sung, before he escaped. “She must have cloth ears,” said Harry as we walked home.

The bombers were still droning over. As we approached the billets we could see a glow in the northern sky. The sound of distant ack ack could be heard. “Someone’s copping it,” said the sentry as we walked into the drive. “Looks like it could be Redhill,” said Harry. But I had my doubts. He was the only man I knew who could get lost in his own street.

After the war, when I lived at Shepherds Hill, Highgate, he said he would show me a short cut to his house in St John’s Way, Archway. We walked for a hour that night, during which time we never got more than three hundred yards from my house. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “It’s the magnetic north, it must have changed during the war.” Whatever that was supposed to mean I’ll never know. We climbed into bed. “I’ve never heard so many bombers before,” said Harry. We lay in bed smoking for about quarter of an hour, then Smudger Smith came in. “Cor, it looks like the sky’s on fire over there.” We pulled on our trousers and climbed up on the roof. The sky was on fire. Other Gunners had joined us. We watched in silence for a while. “I fink it’s London,” said a cockney voice. “Could be,” said another.

George Vincent went down for his prismatic compass. The bearing showed the fire dead on the line to London. Mick Haymer, a Londoner, tried to phone his family, but was told there was ‘disruption’ on the line and all calls to London were blocked. We looked at the blaze and it seemed to be getting bigger. I think we all knew it was London. My mother, father and brother were there. I’m not sure how I felt. Helpless, I suppose. Bombardier Edser switched on the BBC Midnight News, but there was no mention of any raid. Lots of the lads from London (we were a London Regiment) found it hard to sleep that night. In the dark of our bedrooms there were attempts at reassurance.

“They’ve all got Anderson Shelters, they’re dead safe.”

“Yer, dead safe.”

“…and there’s all that anti-aircraft fire…that keeps ‘em up ‘igh.”

“…and there’s the Underground, nuffink could break them.”

The window near my bed faced north. As I lay there, I could see the glow of the fires. The bombers were still going. Some must have been on their way back as we heard cannon fire as night fighters got onto them. What a bloody mess. Men in bombers raining death on defenceless civilians. Still, soon we’d be doing it back to them, on a scale never before imagined. For the love of me I couldn’t get the feeling that I was part of this. Killing of civilians was an outrage I couldn’t swallow on any basis, on any side. In the end there were no sides. Just living and dead. Next morning we got confirmation of the raid.

I managed to get through to my father at his office in Fleet Street and he told me all was well with the family. He was a fire warden on top of the Associated Press building and had seen the whole of what looked like St Paul’s on fire. The papers carried stories of how many German planes were shot down, heroism of the fire brigades, wardens, Red Cross and night fighters, etc., etc. But it didn’t mention the casualties that were heavy, well heavy for that time of the war; later on it appeared that London got off extremely light.

BATTERY CHARACTERS

S
ome people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen-I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment. When the fancy took him he would go ‘on the trot’.

“I’m off sand-ratting,”↓ he’d say.

≡ Sand-rat: seaside whore.

A month later he would give himself up, get fourteen days detention and start all over again. Leather Suitcase was baffled. Why should, an English man in his right mind leave a perfectly good war?

“Look Neat, why do you keep going A.W.O.L.”

“It’s something to do with the shortage of money sir.”

Leather Suitcase as usual gave him fourteen days, and he was remanded for a psychiatrist’s report.

“I don’t like the uniform,” Neat told the psychiatrist.

“And what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s dangerous. Germans shoot at it on sight.”

The report said: “There is nothing wrong with this man. He has a wholesome fear of being shot by Germans.”

“Right,” said Leather Suitcase. “We’ll put you where they can’t get at you, fifty-six days detention!”

“Look sir,” said Neat, hopefully. “Supping I say sorry?”

“Very well, say it.”

“I’m sorry, sir, very, VERY sorry.”

“Finished? Right! fifty-six days detention!” Nead stood tottering for a moment. “.May I have a last request, sir”

“Yes.”

“Would you go to Beachy Head and throw your bloody self off!” This got him another fourteen daps on top of the fifty-six. After this he was posted. Where to? The Tower Armoury.

Gunner Herman Frick was our hypochondriac. He wanted out. He told the M.O., “I have got hereditary flat feet.” After inspecting them the M.O. gave him three aspirins. Which is the Army way of saying you’re a bloody liar. “The doctor’s anti-Semitic,” raged Frick. “I’ll prove my feet are flat.” He smeared the soles of his feet with Brylcreem, then stood on a piece of paper. “There,” he said holding up the print, “genuine flat feet.”