Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (15 page)

Mein Führer, mein Führer.

ADOLPH:

Dere’s only one of me.

GOEBBELS:

In Italy our troops are running out of legs.

ADOLPH:

You Schwein, you haff ruined my happy enema hour.

I see Thelma Oxnevad. “Spike, did you enjoy your leave?” Never mind that, Thelma, marry me at eight o’clock tonight. QMS Ward is asking me to come back to the band. I say, what about my impending coronary? He says that’s all shit. As a qualified Quarter Master Sergeant he says I’m fit. But playing the trumpet could kill me! Yes it could, but if I take the risk, so will he. OK, I’ll try. There I’ll be, playing a great Bunny Berrigan chorus, I hit a top G, clutch my heart and crash face downwards on a mattress. ATS Candy Withers will raise my lovely head in her arms. Have I any last request? Yes, yes, yes, if she could just take her clothes off.

Also my thespian talents are in demand! Sergeant Lionel Hamilton thinks I could play a part in
The Thread of Scarlet
. Will I be the knot? We start rehearsing, but that old Black Magic called Manic Depression attacks me and I’m put to bed with
Aspirins
. What a doctor, I suppose he’s still practising. God knows, he needs to. The play goes on, and horror of horrors, it’s a success!

Someone is worse off than me. Mussolini has been murdered; he and his mistresses are hanging upside down in a garage in Milan.

It was a barbaric act that puts the clock back. However, the natives seem happy. Nothing like an assassination to cheer the masses.

The Mussolini Massacre. They shoot horses, don’t they?

May 1

MY DIARY:

IT’S OVER! JERRY SURRENDERS!

I had just sat down at my morning desk still reeking of porridge when a very excited Colonel Startling Grope thundered into the office. “Have you heard Terence? It’s over! I’ve just spoken to Alex at AFHQ and it’s OVER! General Vietinghoff von Nasty is at the Palace
now
signing the surrender.”

“Great! Do I have to sign anything, Stanley Sir? I mean,
I
haven’t agreed to the surrender.” We can have the day off, he’s right, it’s time we had it off. The Ities are in the street singing ‘Finito, Benito Finito’ and ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’. The bells of the churches ring out their iron victory message.

I walked back through the milling streets, lay on my bed and lit up a Capstan. I could hear the din outside and running footsteps, but I was strangely quiet. Suddenly a complete change of direction. How do you handle the end of a Campaign? I wanted to cry. Was it really over? 31,000 Allied troops had died — a city of the dead. Is a war ever really over?

A few days pass and Steve comes into the room. He is grinning: “Have you seen? He’s dead.” He shows me the headlines.
‘HITLER, SUICIDE IN BUNKER’
. “Yes, he’s dead, his tart
and
his bloody dog.” He hammered the words out like nails in a coffin.

I had better news. Back at the officers’ club in Portici I had snaffled a bottle of Dom Perignon 1935. “I’ve been saving this, Steve,” I said, producing the bottle from its wrapper. We toasted the end in our enamel mugs. We sat grinning in silence. It was all too much; two soldiers; just statistics; where did we fit in…? Mind you, they were still fighting in Berlin, but most of the orchestra had stopped playing.

The Russians are sweeping into Berlin. Their might is awesome. The Allies and the Russians meet on the Elbe. At Lüneburg Heath, Monty accepts the German surrender. It’s over. Just like that. One day war, the next it’s peace. It’s almost absurd. The entire energy of O2E is vested in preparations for the official V-E Night celebrations. It would appear that only alcohol can generate true happiness: hundreds of bottles, barrels and fiasco are stock-piled in every available area. They are scrubbing out the fountain! Why? It’s the brainchild of RSM Warburton who has ordained that it be ‘filled with wine’. They had tried to get the fountains to gush, but the plumbing had long since decayed. The date is fixed. In Part Two orders:

YOU
WILL
ALL HAVE A GOOD TIME, YOU
WILL
GET DRUNK, AND YOU WILL ALL STAGGER AROUND…YOU WILL GET SICK OVER EACH OTHER FOR YOUR KING AND COUNTRY. THE BAND WILL PLAY FOR DANCING UNTIL 2 A.M.

The Square in Alexander Barracks

“Where did all those bloody Union Jacks come from?” Steve is counting the mass of flags that are now starting to appear around the barracks.

“Doesn’t it make you feel good,” I said, “to know that, despite it all, there are factories still making the British Flag.”

“Oh yes, there’s nothing like a good old Union Jack to cheer you up.”

“I always carried a photo of the flag, and many a dark night in a muddy trench, I’ve taken it out and said to my trench mate: “Cheer up,” and shown him my Union Jack. There would always be a response.” Wait! American flags are appearing. “My God,” I cry out, “they’re running out of Union Jacks…!” It’s getting bad! Italian flags are being hoisted, Russian! Any minute now the Ovaltinies’ emblem will be shown. Janker wallahs on ladders are putting up hurriedly painted banners. VICTORY IN EUROPE! others: WELL DONE O2E! A large board with a hand giving the Victory salute. It’s all happening.

I was still wondering if my brother had survived the last days of fighting. I saw him in Sydney last year and he was still alive. At the time I did not know he was still alive in Sydney.

Tuesday 8 May

O
fficial Victory celebrationsssssss, commence! It starts with the day off. We can obtain breakfast up to and including ten hundred hours.

Sergeant Beaton gives a long thanksgiving speech: “Let us be grateful for this Victory.” We were grateful when he’d finished. On the hills behind the town, the Italians are climbing up to make a giant bonfire for the evening, a prelude to which is the occasional trial firework exploding in the street. We wash, rinse and sterilize our mess tins, then wipe them dry with disease-ridden teacloths. Years later, Peter Sellers told me that on this identical day, he was in Ceylon, telling an RAF MO that he (Sellers, that is) had heard a tiger outside his hut the previous night. There being no tigers in Ceylon, LAC Sellers was recommended for a Psychiatrist’s Report. Alas, what transpired at that session has never been recorded.