Where Have All the Bullets Gone? by Spike Milligan Read Free Book Online

walnuts and cracking them behind my knee, a man in a jeep approached. He was to be instrumental in changing my life. By instrumental I don’t mean he was playing the trombone, no. The man is Colonel Startling Grope, a reddish middle-aged man, portly, used to good living, hair cuts, Horlicks, thin legs and suede desert boots. He had a body that appeared to have been inflated, and the air was escaping. When he signed in he shot me a glance full of meaning that I knew not the meaning of.
    Later that night, as he and his cronies are departing, all so pissed you could hear the cistern flushing, he enquires: “What do you do here?” I tell him on a good day I give General Alexander his hat. Otherwise I try not to whistle the Warsaw Concerto. He is intrigued; as he should be. I am quite lovely. Seriously, I’m a wine steward and resident manic depressive. “How would you like to come and work for me as a wine steward and resident manic depressive?” I say yes. Why? Because I have been brought up to feel inferior to everybody: priests, doctors, bank managers and officers were all Gods. To say no to them was a mortal sin punishable by 500 Hail Marys and an overdraft.
    Within a week a jeep arrives and takes me away. The girls all cried and the men cheered. Looking through my diary I found the note I made at the time.

    Translation: “Posted O2E Maddaloni on 8/8/44. Very depressed, same feeling as before.”
     
    So! I was feeling myself like I had before, a duty that until recently had been performed by Maria.
    What was happening to me? I didn’t want to be a Manic Depressive Wine Waiter in Italy! I wanted to be a Manic Depressive Harry James in Catford. Why did a poofy Colonel need a wine waiter???
    The jeep driver is an ex-paratrooper. Ted Noffs gives me the first warning: “Yew wanna watch yer arsole wiv ‘im.” My God, a Brown Hatter! We drive in silence. Speedo says 33 mph, petrol half full, all exciting stuff. Right now my last exciting stuff, Rosa, was back at Portici. An hour’s dusty drive with night approaching. A sign: MADDALONI.
Maddaloni on a Good Day
    “Not far now,” said Noffs. “We korls it Mad’n’lonely, ha ha.” He was such a merry fellow, a fellow of infinte jest and a cunt. We enter a town and slow down outside a faceless three-storeyed municipal school. Turning left by its side we come to a rear back lot with a line of tents and parked vehicles. Noffs stops outside a ten-man tent. “This is yourn.” I thank him and lug my kit into the tent which has an electric light, brighter than the three slobs lying on their beds, smoking and staring. These are khaki skivvies, the playthings of the commissioned classes. One is Corporal Rossi, London Italian Cockney. “You the new wine steward?” Yes. He’s the head barman. I’ll be working under him. That’s my bed. I ask all the leading questions:
     
Where’s the cook house?
The NAAFI?
The Karzi?
What day was free issue?
Any ATS?
No, there’s no ATS but there’s scrubbers in town who do it for ten fags. There’s ‘one that does it for two but she gives you a dose’. This is the stuff that never reaches Official War Histories, folks!
    I find the canteen in the main barrack block (more of it later), have a glass of red wine and a cheese sandwich. The place is full, and soon so am I. I don’t know anybody and nobody wants to know me, but then I haven’t been on television yet! The red wine sets me up for bed. Back under bloody canvas yet again. Like Robert Graves I thought I’d said Goodbye to All That; instead it was Hello to all This! I slept fitfully, sometimes I slept unfitfully. Variety is the spice of life, or if you live in a after-shave factory, the Life of Spice.
    Raffia Party Hats. I was given orders like ‘Tins to be smoothed’ and ‘Bar top to be desplintered’. There I was at dawn with a dopey driver driving around the streets of Caserta buying cabbages, potatoes, figs and oranges, lentils and the whole range of fresh foods for