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First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1978
Published in Penguin Books 1980
Reissued in this edition 2012

Copyright Spike Milligan Productions Ltd, 1978
All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-24-196618-1

PENGUIN BOOKS

Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he was educated in India and England before joining the Royal Artillery at the start of the Second World War and serving in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, touring Europe with the Bill Hall Trio and the Ann Lenner Trio, before joining forces with, among others, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, to create the legendary Goon Show. Broadcast on BBC Radio, the ten series of the Goon Show ran from 1951 until 1960 and brought Spike to international fame, as well as to the edge of sanity and the break-up of his first marriage. He had subsequent success as a stage and film actor, as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and childrens stories, and with his long-running one-man show. In 1992 he was made a CBE and in 2001 an honorary KBE, and in 2000 and 2001 he received two Lifetime Achievement Awards for writing and for comedy. He died in 2002.

Clive James, in a review of one of my war books, quoted it as an unreliable history of the war. Well, this makes him a thoroughly unreliable critic, because I spend more time on getting my dates and facts right than I did in actually writing. I admit the way I present it may seem as though my type of war was impossible and all a figment of a hyper-thyroid imagination, but thats the way I write. But all that I wrote did happen, it happened on the days I mention, the people I mention are real people and the places are real. So I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened. I even got down to actually finding out what the weather was like, for every day of the campaign. Ive spent a fortune on beer and dinners interviewing my old Battery mates, and phone calls to those members overseas ran into over a hundred pounds. Likewise I included a large number of photographs actually taken in situ, dont tell me I faked them all, so no more unreliable history of the war chat.

I want to thank the following for their help with documents, photographs, maps, recollections which are included in this volume: Major J. Leaman, Lt. S. Pride, Lt. C. Budden, B.S.M. L. Griffin, Sgt. F. Donaldson, the late Bombardier Edwards, Bombardier H. Holmwood, Bombardier S. Price, Bombardier A. Edser, Bombardier S. Kemp, L/Bdr. A. Fildes, Gunner Jam-Jar Griffin, Bombardier D. Sloggit, L/Bdr. R. Bennett, Gunner J. Shapiro, Gunner H. Edgington, Gunner Dipper Dye, Driver D. Kidgell, The War Museum Picture Library, Mrs Thelma Hunt, Mrs P. Hurren, all of whom have helped to give you this unreliable history of the war.

This volume ends up on a sad note, even for a born joker like me: the conflict caught up with me and I was invalided out of it. However, the rest of the book tells of what an unusual mob we were and have been ever since. The closeness of those years still exists in as much as we have two reunions a year, something no other British Army unit have. This book is a dedication to the spirit and friendship of D Battery, 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery.

S. M.

Bayswater

March 1978

MY DIARY: STILL AT WAR! EARLY CLOSING IN CATFORD. READ LETTER FROM MOTHER SAYING CHIESMANS OF LEWISHAM ARE SO SHORT OF STOCK, THE MANAGER AND STAFF SIT IN THE SHOP MIMING THE WORDS SOLD OUT .

Dear Reader, the beds in the Dorchester Hotel are the most comfortable in England. Alas! neither Driver Kidgell nor Lance-Bombardier Milligan are in a bed at the Dorchester no! they are trying to sleep on a 10-ton Scammell lorry, parked on the top deck of 4,000-ton HMS Boxer, inside whose innards are packed 19 Battery, 56th Heavy Regiment, all steaming in the hold; from below comes the merry sound of men retching and its all from Gunner Edgington. We are bound for Sunny Salerno. For thirteen days since the 5th Army landing, a ferocious battle had ensued on the beach-head. Even as we rode the waves we knew not what to expect when our turn came. The dawn comes up like Thinder. Thinder? Yes, thats Thin Thunder. Shhhhhh, we all shout. The chill morning air touches the khaki somnambulists sleeping heroically for their King and Country. We are awakened by Gunner Woods in the driving cab, who has fallen asleep on the motor horn. A puzzled ships Captain is wondering why he can hear the sound of a lorry at sea. Kidgell gives a great jaw-cracking yawn and thats him finished for the day. He stretches himself but doesnt get any longer. Deep in his eyes I see engraved the word, TEA. Wakey wakey, he said, but didnt. The ship is silent. The helmsmans face shows white through the wheel house.

HMS Boxer, which landed us at Salerno. This picture was taken after the war, when shed been converted to a Radar Ship.

It is Dawn, yawns Kidgell.

My watch says twenty past, I yawned.

Yes! Its exactly twenty past Dawn, he yawned.

We yawned. Like a comedy duo, we both stand and pull our trousers on; mistake! he has mine and vice versa. The light is growing in the Eastern sky, it reveals a great grey convoy of ships, plunging and rising at the dictation of the sea. LCTs. LCTs, some thirty of them, all flanked by navy Z-Class destroyers. The one on our port bow is stencilled B4. Imagine the confusion of a wireless conversation with it.

Hello B4, are you receiving me?

PAUSE

Hello B4 answering.

PAUSE

Hello B4, why didnt you answer B4?

Because we didnt hear you before.

In the early light the sea is blue-black like ink. Kidgell is carefully folding his blankets into a mess, I havent slept that well for years.