Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (32 page)

Two years in the front line
—
Army food
.

At end of day to a trattoria for dinner

Spike after a good dinner

The waiter who served us

Swimming starkers

June 17
th
1946
.

Barbary Coast
opened at the Bellini Theatre: a packed house, with soldiers queuing all day. Again the Bill Hall Trio, with a lot more gags in the act, steal the show; a corps de ballet from Rome did next best -all top-class dancers and only in this show because Rome Opera House is temporarily closed.

Great write-ups the next day! Then the icing on the cake: we are to tour, but this time we are to include Venice and Vienna! Someone should have told us, “Man, these are the best days of your life, eat them slowly.”

Sunday morning, all bustle and packing kit on to the charabanc, Gunner Hall as usual is missing.

“She must be late paying him,” says Bornheim. All set, we pile on to the CSE charabanc with Umberto the fat Iti driver pinning Holy Pictures on the dashboard to ward off the devil, accidents, Protestants and the husband of the woman he is knocking off.

It’s a sparkling day, the sun streaming through the holes in Bornheim’s underwear. “What’s this Venice like?” he says. I tell him when you step out the front door you go splash! People don’t take dogs for a walk, they take fish. Wasn’t the city resting on piles? Yes, it was agony for the people underneath.

Lieutenant Priest boards the charabanc. “Answer your names,” he says.

“Bornheim G.”

“Sah,” we all shout.

“Mulgrew J?”

“Sah,” we all answer.

He tears up the list in mock defeat; the charabanc and its precious cargo of piss artists proceeds forth. We inch thru the unforgettable fish market off the Piazza Capuana, displaying everything from water-fleas to tuna on the barrows. The mongers douse their catches with water. “Fools,” says Bornheim. “They’ll never revive them.” The church bells are anointing the air, each peal sending flocks of pigeons airborne on nervous wings. Through the machicolated crowds we edge, finally arriving at the peeling front of the Albergo Rabacino, which roughly translated means Rabies. Ronnie Priest flies into its front portals. He’s annoyed — the Italian ballerinas from our cast are not ready. “They had to go to holy bloody mass,” he says. We all get out and stretch our legs and are immediately beset with vendors. I am casting my eye on a tray of watches that gleam gold like the riches of Montezuma. They are in fact cheapo watches dipped in gold-plating. I knock the price down from ten million lire to ten thousand. OK, I buy the watch. Of course it doesn’t give the date, phases of the moon, high tide in Hawaii, it doesn’t light up in the dark, doesn’t give electronic peals every half hour, and it doesn’t ring like an alarm in the morning. All it does is tell the silly old time.

I paid the vendor and told him the time, I said hello to Mulgrew and told him the time, I called Bornheim over and told him the time and I wrote a letter to my mother telling her the time. Looking at the watch I realize it’s time to close this fifth volume of my War Time Trilogy. It was the year I had left the front line and found various Base Depot jobs. I had much to be thankful for and now I knew the time. In Volume Six I will tell the time and the story of my love affair with Maria Antoinette Pontani, the Italian ballerina who in a way changed my life and made me abandon my store of second-hand Army underwear. The time is 11.20 a.m.

Photo of Naples Bay
—
to prove it was there

Table of Contents

Preface

Foreword

AFRAGOLA

Afragola

February 14

News

February 30

92 General Hospital Naples

TORRE DEL GRECO

Torre Del Greco

March 1944

The New Broom Cweeps Slean

March 5

70th General Hospital Pompeii

March 10

Volcanoes, Their Uses in World War II

Diary: March 21

BAIANO

The Baiano Rehabilitation Camp

Orginisateum

Daily Life in the Camp

Romance One

April 13

April 21

Necrophiles

Sport

June. A Posting

The Officers’ Club, Portici

The Dancing Officers

Music Maestro Please

A Colonel Intervenes