Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (11 page)

“That one looks interesting, Len.” I say, pointing out the Yewish Soldiers’ Club. So there
are
such people as Yews; they must come from Yewrusaleum. We opt for the Super Cinema in the Via Depretis. The film is
Sweet Rosie O’Grady
, starring Betty Grable’s legs, and occasionally her. The hero, whose name escapes me, was John Payne; a fitting name for a pain in the arse. It’s San Francisco, but recently vacated by Jeanette MacDonald and Clarke Gable, John Payne is a struggling pianist. He’s also having a struggle acting. He falls in love with Betty Grable’s legs, she falls in love with his bad acting, but the boss of the bar loves her legs more. Payne writes ‘My heart tells Me’; he tells her, “You sing it baby, it’ll be a hit, you’ll see.” The boss says, “She ain’t singin’ no trashy song like that, dis goil I’m savin’ fer Opera.” Payne hits the boss, the boss hits Payne, they hit each other, they break, there is the traditional breaking of the matchstick chair over the hero, who floors the boss. “You’re fired,” he snarls. “Huh, fired, I’ll quit.” (If only he would.) Payne goes to New York. Diamond Jim Brady hires him on to Broadway; he’s in the pit conducting on the big night; Joan Blondell and her tits are going to sing ‘My heart tells me’ and make him famous. But she faints. Who’s going to save the show? Outside in the snow, a ragged unshaven figure appears: it’s Betty Grable. She hears the introduction…The End. Money back please. So to bed.

The Gig

W
e spent the morning lazing. I cleaned my trumpet. In the afternoon band practice, listened to by crowds of soldiers. Comes evening. I couldn’t believe it. Little old me from Brockley, in Rome! Back home I’d never got further than Hernia Bay. The dance is at the Crusader Club. Wow! A huge marble hotel, an officer’s dream palace.

Colonel Philip Slessor greets us. “Who’s in charge?” he asks.

“You are,” we say.

Tall and saturnine, Slessor was later to become a BBC announcer. He started practising right away by announcing that we were to follow him.

The ballroom is magnificent, the stage a mass of red velvet and gold embroidery; it was an ‘embarrass de choix de richesses’. Slessor makes another announcement. “There’s a room for you all to change in.” We haven’t anything to change into except Mr Jekyll.

“What? You’re not going to play like that?” Haven’t we any mess dress? No, there’s another fine mess dress we haven’t got into. I told him we sounded exactly the same in battle-dress as we did in mess dress.

“Huh,” he announces.

The band room is a munificence of coleslaw, the table is groaning with every sandwich possible, even a few impossible ones. Wine? Gallons. A line of bottles without labels. We tasted it, found it tasted like unlabelled wine.

Slessor is announcing again: “We start in ten minutes, lads.” We set up behind the brocade curtains, give him the nod, and he announces: “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have great pleasure in announcing the Band of the Officers of the Second Echelon under their conductor Sergeant Stand (yes, Stand) Britton. Take your partners for the first Waltz.” The curtains draw back as we swing into ‘Song of India’. The floor is soon crammed with dancers, most of the ladies Italian, all desperate for food, fags and soap. It’s hard to believe that the beautiful Contessa, dancing with the cross-eyed Hindu colonel, is doing it for three bars of chocolate.

I was blowing great that night. When I stood up to take a chorus it was for one of two reasons: a) Egomania or b) Piles.

The interval, and Colonel Slessor announces that he’s ‘Very pleased with us’. He then announces he is leaving the room.

Throughout the evening he announced every dance, the names of the tunes, the winners of the spot prize, even “The trumpet solos were by Gunner Millington.” He really was ready for the 9 o’clock news. Finally “The last waltz, please.” ‘God Save the King’, then we moved in on the scoff. It had been a great evening of dancing and announcing; we had seen lots of pretty birds but hadn’t pulled any, so, as Jim Manning said, “We’ll ‘ave ter pull ourselves.”

Colonel Philip Slessor showing an officer the correct dress and stance for announcing

The Days

T
he days of that week were spent visiting every tourist trap available, the Vatican, the Fountains of Rome, the Capitol, the Karzi, during which time I nearly scored.

We have one night off and I go solo walkabout. I’m hovering near the Therme de Caracalla when I hear a sweet female voice laced with sandpaper — there were no words as such — but she is bearing down on me as though I’m an old friend. A Junoesque thirty-five-year-old in black, and wearing an Ascot hat, she grabs my hand and says how good it is to see me again.

“Come sta?”

Oh, I’m very ‘sta’. It’s all a ploy to avoid the suspicion of; being on the game. I like this game, but I want game, set and match. She is desperate, she’s short of money and at her’ wit’s end. My type.

She is respectable, she’s not on the game, but she’s desperate. So am I, I tell her. She says we must retire to a cafe. She: needs a coffee and brandy as she is ‘faint’, all twelve stone of her. So there we are in the cafe; she tells me she is married, that her husband is in the Reggimento Aeronautica, though he hasn’t been sending her any money. But beware, he is ‘molto geloso’ and she shows me his photo. He looks like two Al Capones stuffed into a uniform. She thinks he’s a prisoner of war ‘somewhere’. I hope it’s Siberia. Can Gunner Milligan take her to dinner tomorrow? No he can’t, he’s playing in the band. Oh, so I’m a musician! How romantico! The next night then, yes. I know the Sunday is free. Can I bring her some chocolate, soap, cigarettes, sweets, in fact the entire stores of the Allied 5
th
Army. There is a promise of female favours in her eyes. Yes I will etc. I tell the boys. They go green with envy, some go yellow and grey.

“Wot’s she like?” says Private Manning, lying on his bed looking at the ceiling, imagining it’s him. I say she likes the contents of warehouses. I say she’s a mixture of Rita Hay-worth, Betty Grable and Mae West. I’ll make the buggers suffer.

Romance Two

W
e meet at the cafe. She’s gone ahead and put two cognacs on my bill. Have I got the goodies? I hand her my meagre parcel, apologizing for omitting the leg of venison and side of beef. She must examine the contents and check these against her list. We must take a horse-drawn carriage, it will be less conspicuous. So we drive down the Corso Umberto while she checks the parcel. Mama mia! Only chocolate, cigarettes and jam? I apologize. Never mind, she knows a ‘cosy little’ trattoria. This is called La Tantolina and it’s disguised as a four-star hotel. I can’t believe the swish interior, black velvet and gold cutlery, all tables arranged in private nooks, with lights from chandeliers that look like flying saucers. A trio are playing ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’. We are seated under the stern gaze of the Maître. “Hello mate,” I say. He hands me the menu like a summons. One look and I realize I’m hurtling to financial oblivion. Just the soup needs a bank loan. What will madame have? She will have all Milligan’s savings, post-war gratuities and his collection of underwear.

“Oh che mangiare,” she says in ecstasy. Why oh why isn’t Gunner Milligan eating, why is he only sipping water and not drinking the luscious vintage Masi? I tell her it’s my delayed Easter fast. “Che poverino,” she coos, munching Polio Romana. I watch her clock up seventeen thousand lire; I have eighteen, I just make it. I give the waiter a ten lire tip, which he throws in the rubbish bin. What now? Revenge in bed. No, she must fly, her mother is ill. She borrows my last 1000 lire, “Taxi!”

I never saw her again. That night, starving and skint, I could be found diving for coins in the Trevi Fountain. The lads; I lied to them, yes! I’d had it away again and again and again! I couldn’t stop her! She said she’d leave her husband and join me in England. I failed to add, in a debtors’ prison. Yes, lads, it was some night, now can someone lend me a bar of soap and a fag?

Our final gig is at the Nirvenetta Club, Via de Monoriti; after that we all found our way to the GI Swing Club on the Via Vittoria Collona, a below-ground joint with seepage from the Tiber and an Iti ‘swing band’ that sounds like seepage from the Tiber — yes, it’s ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’. We don’t get a dance — everyone has brought their own bird. Under Mussolini, jazz has been forbidden. This must have been the band that caused it. We ask them if we can sit in; they grudgingly agree. Soon we’ve wiped them out, we have the place jumping. G is are appreciative: “Great! Man, you should have come sooner,” they say. We know. We get free drinks and the Italian musicians sit and glower at our success. First we bomb Monte Casssino and now this.

Back to Base

O
n the morrow we drive back to Maddaloni. We arrive in the early evening. During our absence, the old dance hall has been renovated by George Lambourne and his merry painters and looks great. Now we have a stage and an orchestra pit, lighting board, paint frame, the lot. We are forewarned by BQMS Drew Taylor, a khaki Florenz Ziegfeld, that a concert is to be given for the Grand Opening. Have we any contributions? I said mine were in the stomach of a ; bird in Rome. Can we do a small swing spot? Yes, has he a gallows?

Alick Adams reports:

A leading feature of the show was the O2E Dance Band, especially a spot in the second half when, as the programme states, Spike Milligan & the Rythm Section ware featured.

I recall that the show was under the patronage of one Brigadier Woods, Deputy Adjutant General, or DAG for short. This proved significant for the aforementioned Spike had written a special number for the concert, ‘Doodle with DAG’. ‘Doodle’ being a euphemism which was in popular use in the Other Ranks Bar at the time. The trumpet solo was of course executed from the horizontal position, the instrumentalist’s embouchure being very prominent from this angle.

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