Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (5 page)

A STRETCH OF COAST FORM SALERNO TO SORRENTO, THER IS SCENERY THAT HAS INSPIRED POETS PAINTERS MUSICIANS FOR CENTURIES, IT IS STEEPED IN HISTORY, I HAVE RECORDED MANY INTERESTING FACT ABOUT THESE QUAINT PLACES I HAVE VISITED, DURING MY LEAVE PERIODS IN THIS COUNTRY,MY POST CARD COLLECTION IS NOW ENOURMOUS, I’M SURE YOU WILL BE DELIGHTED TO SEE MY COLLECTION. I HAVE ALSO MANAGED TO OBTAIN A PIECE OF MOSAIC FROM ONE OF THE VILLAS IN RUINED POMPEII.

(AT THIS STAGE YOU MUST EXCUSE THE ERRATIC SPACING BUT THIS MISSIVE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE TYPEWRITE TO ALLOW THE DISPATCHES OF WAR TO TAKE PRECEDENCE), ANY HOW POMPEII…I SPENT THREE DAYS OF MY FOUR DAY LEAVE IN THIS ENCHANTING TOWN OF YESTERYEAR, I TOOK PARTICULAR NOTE OF THE
ARCHETICTURE
ARCITECTURE OF THAT IDOM, AND STRANGE TO SAY THE COUNTRY BUILDINGS OF TO DAY( IN ITALY 0 ARE DEFINATELY A PROTOTYPE, OF POMPEII’S VILLAS. THE FARMERS OUT HERE ARE MASTERS OF THEIR CRAFT, STILL EMPLOYING METHODS CONSIDERED ANCIENT BY OUR STANDARDS, BUT NEVER THE LESS PRODUCING THE SAME FULL HARVEST. THE LATINS ARE NOT LIVING A LIFE BASEDON THE GLORIFICATION IN MY PAST FEW LINES ..ON THE CONTRARY, I SHOULD SAY BY MERE OPTICAL DEDUCTION, THAT 30 % OF ITALIAN FAMILIES ARE BARELY EXISTING. THE REST LIVE ON EITHER BLACK MARKET, THEIR WITS, OR WORKING FOR THE ANGLO-AMERICAN FORCE. I AHVE A REALLY GOOD FRIENDIN THE LOCAL TOWN.. HE IS A FAMILY MAN, A CHARMING AND FAITHFUL WIFE(A RARITY IN ENGLAND) AND 5 BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN, ONE OF WHICH (ANNA BY NAME) I AM VERY MUCH ATTACHED TOO, SHE IS 5 YEARS OF AGE, A TYPICAL LATIN/ BROWN EYES THAT HAVE PATHOS, SINCERETY, WARMTH AND ALL THAT FO TO MAKE THE FEATURES WORTHY OF THEIR ROMAN ANCESTORS, FRANCE HAS 3 BROTHERS, ALL THINK THE WORLD OF ME, THEY ARE MUSICAL, EACH BEING A COMPETENT SOLOIST ON THE GUITAR, I SPEND EVERY EVENING AT THEIR HOME, WITH THE TRADITONAL VINO BLANCA (WHITE WINE) AND FRUIT THAT WOULD DRIVE AN ENGLISH HOUSE WIFE OFF HER HEAD WITH JOY. WELL DAD YOU HAVE HEARDENOUGH FOR TO NIGHT(THE CANDLE IS RUNNING LOW) I MUST FINI POURA SA SARA. ARE FER TEACHI(SEEIN YA)

YOUR AFFECTIONATE SON

TERRY.

P.S. PLEASE PASS THIS LETTER ON TO MUM.

T.M.

A stream that runs through the camp has been dammed and a swimming hole is the result. I will recount an incident with one of the more advanced loonies. ‘Tis evening, and Milligan takes to the waters; there approaches a loony. The conversation I remember almost to the word.

He stood still for a moment, then without a word of thanks, went his way whistling all the while.

Sport

C
aptain Peters is of a mind that we are in need of exercise. “Football! Phnut!” The camp is divided into four teams -Red, Blue, White, Yellow. The teams were up to twenty a side. I played for the Reds. I never saw the ball, but I heard it several times. Getting past two goalies presented difficulties, especially as they threatened you if you tried to score a goal. “You score and I’ll kill you, you bastard!” Still, it was fun. Athletics presented a problem as there was no track. Owing to the terrain, all races had to be run in a straight line. This was OK for the Dash but the mile was a disaster.

Records? Forget it; over the stony pot-holed track it took the winner of the 100 yards 20 seconds! The mile took a quarter of an hour and we had to send a truck out to bring them back. The Marathon was cancelled. As Peters said, “We’d never see them again.” The prizes were ideal for those trying to get fit. Fags.

June. A Posting

A
h! That Italian summer in the Campania. The mornings, the cool air touching the face like an eider feather, the dawn light under the tent flap vivifying the moment, the aroma of dew on earth, the distant cockerel, the sound of the old guard standing down, the clank of the early morning tea bucket. Long before we rose the trundling of ox carts to the fields and the “Aie!” of the calling herdsmen, all this and the lung-bursting coughing of Private Andrews.

“Who’s a lucky lad then?” says Sergeant Arnolds.

I pause at my desk and answer: “A lucky lad is the Duke of Windsor now soaking up sea and sun as the Governor of Bermuda.” No, no, the lucky boy is me. He throws me a document. From this camp of a thousand loonies I am being posted to the Officers’ Club, Portici, as a wine steward. The word gets round. Milligan is leaving!!

The night before I left, Reg Bennett, Jock Rogers, Bronx Weddon, Private Andrews and I had a farewell party at the Welfare Centre. It was eggs and chips and red wine. Reg played the piano, I played the trumpet, then into the back garden to hear the Italian orchestra playing old Neapolitan : Airs — ‘Lae ther piss tub down bab’ (‘Lay that Pistol down, Babe’).

“The place won’t be the same without you,” says a tearful Reg Bennett. I tell him it wasn’t the same
with
me. We stagger home by a hunter’s moon, our shadows going before us on the silver ribbon of a road. Me, at an Officers’ Club!

“I wonder what they’ll make me,” I said.

“They’ll make you an offer,” says Bronx.

The Officers’ Club, Portici

I
t was a large splendid classical-style villa on the main road. I walked up a tessellated path, then right up marble steps with Venetian balustrades into a large white foyer, which had pedestalled busts of Apollo, Hermes, Aristotle and several etcs. In a large dining-room I am intercepted by a short squat thick-set Corporal of the Black Watch, complete in clan kilt. He is the image of Jerry Collona.

“I’m Gunner Milligan I —”

He pounces in. “Ahhyes, you’ve come at an awkward time.”

“I could come back…after the war.”

No, follow him. Through an arched annexe into a sumptuous room, the beds are on a three-foot raised platform in the middle, surrounded by a Roman-style wooden railing in the St Andrew’s Cross design. “It’s how the Romans used to sleep, raised up,” he explains. “That’s my bed, use the mossy-net at night and take Mepacrin.” He is Corporal Tom Ross. “You can call me Tom, except near officers.” Right, he can call me Spike, except near railings. He is from the 51
st
Highland Division. Had I heard of them? Yes, we called them the ‘Hydraulics’ because they would lift anything. He too was bomb-happy. “Alamein, it were tue much fer me.” I told him not to worry, it was too much for Rommel as well.

I met the staff. The cook, Franco (all Italian cooks not called Maria are Francos in Italy), two serving girls, Rosa and Maria (all Marias not called Rosa are called Marias in Italy), girl secretary Bianca, Italian barman Carlo (all Italians not called Franco are Carlos except the Pope). The officer in charge is Lieutenant Oliver Smutts, bomb-happy, balding, with an Adam’s apple which looks like a nose further down; slim, as are his chances of promotion. He interviewed me. I was to be receptionist and wine waiter.

SMUTTS:

Do you know much about wine, Milligan?

MILLIGAN:

Yes sir, I get pissed every night.

The club is open from midday till the wee hours. It closes when either the guests or the staff collapse. A ‘Gypsy’ band plays for dancing; the leader is Enrico Spoleto, who turns out to be the Town Major’s batman, Eric Collins. In his black trousers, white shirt and red bandanna, he looked as much like a gypsy as Mel Brooks looked like Tarzan.

The job is bliss, except! Pasha Smutts is jealous. Bianca, his fancy, fancies Buttons. Was it my fault that I was lovely? Lots of fun and games with Maria and Rosa. Breakfast is in bed! Brought by Rosa or Maria. Maria made a point of whipping the bedclothes off to examine my condition. I never failed her. It was a good Rabelaisian start to the day.

My duties are to make out the menus, check the wine stocks, and release anyone imprisoned in them. Apart from the gypsy orchestra, there’s still a lot of fiddling. Tom balances the books so well we all pocket five hundred lire a week. The evil cook will do anything for fags except his wife. Rosa lays the tables and Tom lays Rosa. I sit at the door and book the officers in. It was a paid membership club, with a tendency to not remembership to pay. Like Groucho Marx said: “Never lend people money, it gives ‘em amnesia…”

The Dancing Officers

T
he terrace is cleared for these gyrations. Most of the partners are WREN or ATS Officers and the occasional upper class Iti scrubber. Spoleto and his ‘Gypsies’ make woeful attempts to play ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘One o’clock Jump’, and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. The trouble is the partially deaf Italian drummer of seventy who has no damper on his bass drum so that it booms round the room like a cannon; but we are grateful for it when Spoleto takes a vocal in an appalling nanny-goat voice:

“There’ll be BOOM BOOM over the BOOM BOOM of Dover To BOOM BOOM just you wait and BOOM BOOM.”

Thank God they never played the Warsaw Concerto.

Dancing. There are none worse than those swaying pump-handled Hooray Henrys. I watched the agonized gyrations of the two dancers’ feet, neither pair knowing what instructions it was supposed to be receiving. The male feet getting vague messages, the female feet immediately having to adjust to their bidding. The female is being backed up like a coal lorry. To vary this the male suddenly tries to revolve her round him, ending up with Barley Twist legs and shattered knees. The female legs are now at the rear of the male legs, the male unwinds his Barley Twist legs bringing the poor female’s legs back again, and the coal lorry style continues.

There can be no enjoyment in it at all, but it has to be done.

Through the warm night Spoleto and his ‘Gypsies’ batter through ‘Little Brown Jug’. I tell Tom, “He thinks he’s Glenn Miller.” Tom says he’s more like ‘Max Fuckin’ Miller’. It had to be done.

Wow! Gentry! General Alexander and his retinue breeze in for an after-dinner drink. Immaculate in starched KDs, he was in a, shall-we-say, “flushed’ mood; he had just seen the Anzio breakout, the fall of Rome and the news of D-Day. This was a celebration. I admired him until he too started barley twisting his legs on the floor. His laughing retinue was last to leave. As I handed him his hat, he said ‘What do you do?”

“I hand hats to departing officers,” I replied.

He smiled and barley twisted his way out. A great soldier, a terrible dancer.

Music Maestro Please

S
poleto had given me the address of a Professor Fabrizzi. He lived in a seedy villa in Resina, a town built over the city of Herculaneum. He was about seventy and used to play the harp in the San Carlo Orchestra and I could see that it wouldn’t be long before he would be playing it again. He had long white snowy hair, a gaunt shrunken smiling face and two deep-set brown eyes. Harmony and counterpoint? Of course, 500 lire an hour. “Harmony is not easy,” he said. At 500 lire a go I agreed. His ‘study’ was lined with books on music and gardening. Perhaps I could learn harmony and tree growing. “Professor Milligan will now play his tree! The compostion is in A Minor, the tree is in A garden.”