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

O2E Officers’ Mess. Another Fine Mess I’d gotten into. Shagged out by mid-afternoon, I was then put on bar duties for the evening, serving a crowd of pissy Hooray Henrys. By the amount of drink and smoke around they must long since have died of lung cancer or cirrhosis. Disaster. The bar phone rings; they want a Major Bastard. That’s how they pronounced it.
    “Phone call for Major Bastard,” I yell above the din.
    A man purple with rage and halitosis snatches the phone: “Bass -tard , you Bastard,” he hissed. He was a real Bass-tard!
    I was making a cock-up of the job. Not that I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to.
    “The Colonel wants to see you,” says Rossi. OK, if he looks through that window, he’ll get a glimpse of me desplintering the bar.
    “Look Milligan,” says Major Startling Grope. We are in his office. “The Sergeant says you aren’t very good at your job.”
    “He’s a liar, sir. I’m bloody useless at my job. I could lose us the war.”
    He laughed. How am I at clerking? I don’t know.
    “How are you at figures?”
    “Terrible, you should see the women I go out with.”
    “Look, Milligan, give it a try. If you don’t like it, we can try something else.” Like Suicide. OK.
    I work for him in ‘O’ Branch in the school building. A large airy office with a Sergeant Hallam, a mild-mannered poof. Then a clerk, Private Len Arrowsmith, a small lively amusing lad; then me at the bottom of the heap as filing clerk. We each have a separate desk. It’s cushy. I just get files, give files and take the files back; the job has all the magic of an out-of-order phone box. It’s OK to sleep in the office provided bedding is hidden during the day! So I move in and join Arrowsmith.
    “You’ll like it here,” says Len. “At night you have a lovely view of the typewriter.”

Romance
    S o far Sergeant Hallam has always carried the files to the Colonel. But I’m lovelier. So now it’s me.
    Announcement over the interphone. “Send Milligan in with File X.” The Colonel is ‘getting to know me’. I was going through what girls go through with in the initial chatting-up process.
    “What is your — er — do sit down, Milligan, you can dispense with rank.”
    “I haven’t any rank to dispense with, sir.”
    “You can call me Stanley.”
    “Yes sir, Stanley.”
    “What’s your first name?”
    “Spike, Stanley, sir.”
    “Spike? That’s not your real name.”
    “No, my real name is Terence.”
    At the mention of the name his eyes lit up with love.
    “Terence,” he lisped. “Yes, that’s better, Terence, that’s what I’ll call you.” Like Private Noffs said: “Watch yer arsole.”
    I had not forgotten my trumpet. In the evening I’d practise in the office. Those notes that echoed round Maddaloni’s fair streets were to lead me to fame, fortune, overdraft, VAT, Income Tax, mortgages, accountants, solicitors, house agents, nervous breakdown and divorce.
O2E Dance Band, August-September 1944, each man a master of posing . Piano: Sgt. S. Britton; Bass: L/Bdr. L. Prosser; Drums: Pte. ‘Chick’ Chitty; Guitar: Phil Phillips; 1st Trumpet: Gnr. S. Milligan; 2nd Trumpet: Pte. G. Wilson; 1st Alto: Sgt. H. Carr; 2nd Alto: Pte. J. Manning; Tenor: Pte. J. Buchanan
    It starts with a tall thin, bald, moustachioed Sergeant Phil Phillips. He leads the O2E band. Will I play for them? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Here is a recollection of those days by the bass player L/Bdr Len Prosser, who is now, according to his psychiatrist, the President of the United States.
     
----
    LEN PROSSER’S RANDOM REMINISCENES OF ITALY - 1944 -1946
     
    The O2E Dance Orchestra started out playing for dancing in the hall at Maddaloni Barracks, later playing ‘in the pit’ for variety show each Saturday night and on occasion during the week. For some shows the band would be on stage in the tradition of ‘show bands’, set up in tiers. Recalled is one particular Saturday evening when several of the band members had