Goodbye Soldier

Author:Spike Milligan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1985-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Herbert Morrison promises full employment for many years ahead

Spanish Frontier Sealed

RUSSIA ASKS AMERICA FOR BIG LOAN

Nuremberg Defence Opening Delayed

Ah, here is the best one;

HITLER’S EX-SECRETARY ARRESTED

- the copy reads. She is said to have lost none of her fanaticism for the Nazi cause and prays nightly beneath a picture of Hitler who, like God, appears to be deaf. Ah, a funny one: a blood donor in Australia had so much alcohol in his blood that the recipient got pissed. So, all that is going on in the world! What a jolly place it is.

The rain leaves off. Through the afternoon, we are getting travel-numb and I might say traveller’s bum – there’s a limit to how long a bum can be sat on. After three hours, there are cries of distress – people want to relieve themselves. Luigi pulls over by a wooded verge. The ladies disappear into the trees to the left and the men to the right, and never the twain shall meet. “I think that I shall never see,” says Born-heim, “A poem lovely as a tree.” So saying, he lets go against one. The floodgates are opened and we all return with satisfied smirks. (Are your smirks satisfied, dear reader?)

At Farno, we leave the sea and travel inland – two hundred miles to go. “It’s too bloody long,” complains Hall. “We should have stayed at Riccione for the night.” For once we all agree with Hall. What a strange man he was: he looked permanently unshaven, he was six foot tall and even thinner than me. If anyone has seen an illustration of Paganini, then this man had the same deep-set burning eyes. I think he also had burning arms and legs. He was the epitome of the English eccentric. Why, why wouldn’t he ever send his underpants and socks to the laundry? He would never say.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Mulgrew. “If he sent ’em to a laundry, they’d send them to a solicitor.”

“Anyone like a sweet?” says Lieutenant Priest, handing around a bag of bull’s-eyes. Ah! My childhood favourite, black with thin white stripes. I used to wonder how they made the stripes. To this day, I don’t know.

Ah! Luigi is slowing down, he’s stopping for petrol! God, how exciting! We needed this to keep our morale up. Some of us get off. The petrol station sells bits and pieces. I buy a packet of nuts of unknown origin. I give some to Toni. They taste like almond-flavoured cardboard. “Che bruto,” she says, spitting them out. So did anybody want to buy a packet of carboard nuts? Only eaten once, must sell, owner going abroad. Toni wants to sleep. I put my arm around her and she drops off. I stick it until my arm goes numb. Wake up, Toni, it’s arm back time. My circulation is worse than Blackwood’s Magazine.

We are travelling through great vistas of farming land. They are still ploughing with great white oxen like the cattle we see on Roman statuary.

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