Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (12 page)

We all worked very hard to get the show together and we opened to an enthusiastic reception. I did a mad musical spot called The Ablution Blues, with a pair of pyjama trousers tied to my trumpet that I kept dipping into a bucket of soapy water, then swinging round and drenching the audience.
I
thought it was very funny, I did, I thought it was
very
funny. Thanks to hard work the act was a smash flop. The reception was like the one Judas got at the last supper.

The Ablution Blues
—
an overwhelming flop
.
Piano:
Stan Britton;
Drums:
Vic Shewry;
Bass:
Len Prosser
Why should I take all the blame?

The evening concluded with the band playing prior to ‘closedown’ (see programme). Finally there was a speech on the new stage by the Brigadier, who said all the right things: “I would like to thank…grateful to…hard work…made it possible…not forgetting…with the help of…debt of gratitude…and of course…without whose help…bearing in mind…last but not least…has anyone seen Mademoiselle Ding?”

Let’s see what George Lambourne thought about it: “Back to Maddaloni to O2E Concert (opening ceremony). Brigadier Woods in opening speech said a lot of flattering and charming things about me which I did not hear!
I thought the concert very bad
.”

Religious Interlude

M
y days of sleeping on O branch office floor were over. I had found a windowless little room up a flight of stairs adjacent to the C of E chapel room at Alexander Barracks. I ask the Rev. Sergeant Beaton if I could sleep in it. Yes, but nothing else, remember! The chapel is next door and there’s early services. OK, I move in, and am immediately seized upon to help. Sunday, the ‘pumper’ for the organ hasn’t shown, can I? There, on my knees I am gainfully employed i by the Lord. The handle
should
be lowered and raised with an air of delicacy, but Gunner Milligan is a jazz pumper, with a beat-me-daddy-eight-to-the-bar. There is a sickening ‘CRACK’, I am left with the shaft, and the only way to keep the music going is to activate the remaining four-inch stump. Panicky I pump gallantly, but just can’t get enough air into the bellows. The organ fades, and wheezes back to life as the lunatic Gunner tries to keep it operating. No good, it’s starting to sound like a bagpipe chanter groaning into life. The congregation are in disarray. Exhausted, I jack it in, the organ ‘expires’ with a long groan and ‘Fissshhhhhh’ as the last wind escapes.

Jesus said, “Through suffering thou shalt come to me.” Well, I was nearly there.

After our weekly Saturday night dance, I would like to hang back and play the piano. I had the illusion that a concerto would come. I was really Cornel Wilde as Chopin. As the climax of the Finale Grandioso con Woodbines, a magnificent ATS Private in a transparent cheesecloth vest would appear and unroll a mattress: “Come Chopin, forget your silly old Nocturnes — have something else.”

On one such evening, someone does approach. It’s a Yewish sergeant who wants to say how much he has enjoyed my trumpet playing. He’s just joined the unit and is also keen on show business.

Well, it was the start of a friendship. I let him move into my billet because I thought he had money.

Sgt. Steve Lewis A Yewish soldier taken in colour because he had money (N.B. due to the publishers’ lack of money, it’s black and white after all.
)

Help. A giant Yewish bedroll appeared, followed by a Yewish Brigade kitbag, table, chair, tea chest, camouflaged Minorah, and a secondhand copy of the Talmud. He then proceeded to erect the most complicated Heath Robinson network of strings, pulleys, hooks, weights and counter-weights. He wanted to be able to switch lights on and off, raise or lower them, drop his mosquito net, manoeuvre his mess tins and mug near or far, boil a kettle, make tea, toast bread, and open Tower Bridge, all without moving from his bed. I asked him, was he training to be a cripple? He had enough food by his bed to outlast an Atomic War and still open a shop in Golder’s Green. If he had been at Masada it would never have fallen; he would have sold it to the Romans. I pointed out that his wasn’t the only persecuted race. There were the Irish.

“Spike, the Irish got off light.”

“We took as much stick as you did.”

“Listen, we Jews have been persecuted since Egyptian times.”

I told him I had never read the
Egyptian Times
.

“All you suffered from was a shortage of spuds.”

“Steve, in 1680, there were eleven million Irish. Now there’s only two. We lost nine million.”

“Nine million. Oh what a terrible accountant.”

“Don’t joke, they were starved, killed, deported or emigrated.”

He laughed. “You
sure
they weren’t Jewish?”

We had unending arguments. “The Irish? What did they ever have? We had Einstein, Disraeli, Pissarro, Freud. What have the Irish got? Pissed!”

“We got the Pope and Jack Doyle.” “Jack Doyle the boxer? He’s useless!” “Yes, but we got him.”

“And there’s never been an Irish Pope. How come?” “It’s the fare.”

In the shower Steve noticed I’d been circumcised. “Why?” I didn’t know. “To make it lighter? You know, Milligan, if Jerry took you prisoner, that could have got you into a concentration camp.” It was really something when your prick could get you sent to a concentration camp. “Believe me, Spike,” says the Yew, “anyone that sends someone to a concentration camp is a prick.” Amen.

This was the beginning of an ongoing Judaeo-Christian hilarity. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I’d call, “Is that the Yew?” I could hear his stifled giggles.

“Listen Milligan,” he’d say. “Believe me, the Irish are famous for
nothing
.” And so to Christmas.

Yes, Christmas, bloody Christmas. We decided to do our shopping in Naughty Naples. All up the Via Roma urchins are grabbing us and singing, ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’. Why in the land of opera do they descend to this crap? If the reverse were to apply in London, little Cockney kids would be singing ‘
La Donna e Mobile
’ as they begged. We make our Christmas purchases and retire to the Royal Palace, NAAFI, where, God help us, we are assailed by God bless her and keep her…away from us…Gracie Fields. She’d had a bad press at the beginning of the war about living in America, leaving poor Vera Lynn and Ann Shelton to face the bombs. Now she was making up for it. Every day she’d leave her Capri home and bear down on unsuspecting soldiers. “Ow do lads.” Then, without warning, sing ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’.

After a while the lads had had enough of ‘Ow do lads’ and ‘Sall-eeee’ and the sight of her looming up the stairs would start a stampede out the back, with cries of “Christ! Here she comes again.” Nothing personal against the dear lady, who had a big heart and an enlarged liver, but she did overdo the “Eee ba gum, ‘ave a cup o’ tea lads.”

Sometimes you wouldn’t know she was in, until from a distant table, you’d hear ‘It’s the biggest Aspidistra in the World’. To get rid of her we directed her to a table of Goumiers (Rapists by appointment to the Allies) by telling her they were Gurkhas. “Sallyyyyyyy, Salleeeee,” she sang at the baffled Moroccans. They didn’t even try to rape her.

A look-out on the Royal Palace
NAAFI
roof, watching for signs of Gracie Fields’s boat

December

I
t’s cold, cold, cold. You can strike matches on ‘em. My family have had a photo taken that sends a chill of horror through me. Were they dead or stuffed? My brother has the sneer of a high-born Sioux Chief, my mother has had a bag of flour thrown at her face, and my father looks as though he’s just been asked to leave for an indiscretion.

A Christmas card from my mother gives my brother second billing, and poor father! Dad is spelt with a small d. Is he getting shorter? There are no traditional Christmas cards in Italy, so I send those available.

For my father I did a funny drawing of a man with a revolving wig. You see, my father wore one. His fear was that any gale over force three lifted the front and transferred it to the back. People wondered why he wore his hat in the Karzi.

O2E Christmas Arrangements

T
he Welfare Department had made a Christmas tree that stood by the concert stage. A wonderful effort dressed in crepe paper, cotton-wool balls and little candles. Pity about the fire.

We are putting up snow scenes with make-do commodities.

My brother, mother and father, Desmond, Florence and Leo Milligan

A Christmas card from my parents in Brentwood, posted October 10 1944