RETURN TO ITALY
Return to Italy
The morning of November the second dawns. A hurrying RTO Sergeant proceeds down the corridor. “Maddaloni in fifteen minutes.” Familiar landscape is in view, the hills behind Caserta are light and dark in the morning sun. We wipe the steamed windows to see it. I’ve had breakfast: two boiled eggs, boiled bread and boiled tea. How come the Continentals can’t make tea? If this is tea, bring me coffee. If this is coffee, bring me tea. The Italian waiter says they don’t go much on tea. I tell him if they did it would make it stronger. The black giant locomotive groans and hisses to a clanking steaming halt, there’s a long shuddering final hiss as the steam leaches out, like a giant carthorse about to die. We all climb down on to the tracks. A few thank the unshaven smoke-blackened driver. There’s a clutch of lorries waiting, they are dead on time. Now the war’s over the Army’s getting it together. Wearily we clamber on board and arrive at Alexander barracks as the town is coming to life. Shagged-out cats are heading for home and the odd early morning dog sits on the cold pavement, freezing his bum and scratching away the night fleas.
“Wake up, Steve.” I shake the sleeping Yew. “Wake up, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”
“Piss off,” he says, without opening his eyes.
“Wake up Steve my old friend, it’s me, Sunny Spike Milligan, back from foreign shores with a tale to tell.”
He raises his lovely head, squints, groans, and lets his head fall back with a thud. Go away Milligan, go a long way away, take a known poison and only come back when you’re dead.
I take his eating irons and bring him his breakfast. This thaws him out.
“Breakfast in bed,” he says, sitting up, pulling strings that raise the mosquito net, empty the po, release his shirt, loosen his pyjamas, bring his socks, raise his vest, lower his comb, push his boots…So what was England like? It’s like 1939 with bomb craters and fruit cake, and there’s a lot of it about. I should know, I’m just recovering. Back into the office grind. What news? During the absence of the band on leave, entertainment has come to a halt.
Redivivus
We’ve got to do a spot on the Variety Bill this Monday.” Stan Britton welcomes me back. “They want something funny and musical.” How about ‘Ave Maria’ naked in gumboots filled with custard? No? Then ‘Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen’ sung from inside a fridge through the keyhole. No? Why am I wasting my time on this man when I could be wasting it on a woman in Sandwich?
Shock Horror Etc and Other Headlines!
I was to get the chop! Not the leg of lamb or the kidney but the chop! While I was helping the women of England get back to normal in Sandwich, Brigadier Henry Woods has decided that either I go or he stays.
BOMBARDIER MILLIGAN S. 954024
With effect from November the umpteenth, the above will be posted to the CPA, Welfare Department, Naples.
Signed H Woods, Brigadier and midget.
So, he was the coloured gentleman in the wood pile. I swore I would never go to the pictures with him again. (He died a few years ago. I wish him well.) Why was he persecuting me like this? My only crime was my only crime. Still, like Cold Collation I could take it. I had letters to that effect from several serving women. The papers should hear of this.
DAILY MIRROR
Ace Filing Clerk To Be Axed Shock Horror etc.
Today, Bombardier Milligan, the world-renowned corporal with three stripes, and known throughout the Italian theatre of war as the most advanced filing clerk in the British Army, heard that he was to be sacked.
— Reuter.
The band boys tried to commiserate with me. We had a last jam session in the band room and rounded off with a great piss up. I was carried to my room for the last time…
A New Life and a New Dawn
A truck is waiting to take me away. How many times have I done this? Yet again the kit is piled in the back, and like a sheep to market, I am driven away, all on the whim of one man who thought I played my trumpet too loud. I am puzzling over what CPA means. Captain’s Personal Assistant? Cracked People’s Area? Clever Privates’ Annexe? “None of these,” says the driver. “It’s ‘Centril Pule of Hartists (Central Pool of Artists), hits a place where orl dhan-graded squaddies who can hentertain are sent.” Was he a down-graded entertainer?
“Yer.”
“What do you do?”
“Hi sing Hopera.”
“Opera?”
“Yer, you know, La Bhome, Traviahta, and the like.”
“Were you trained?”
“Now, it cum natural like.”
“Have you ever sung in opera natural like?”
“No, I just done the horditions like. The Captain says ‘ees waitin’ for a suitable vehicle for me.” Like a bus, I thought.
We have driven through Naples, turned left at the bottom of Via Roma up the Corso San Antonio, which goes on for ever in an Eastern direction. Finally we arrive at a broken-down Army Barracks complex. The walls are peeling, they look as if they have mange. I report to a Captain Philip Ridgeway, a sallow saturnine fellow with a Ronald Colman moustache who looks as if he has mange as well. He sits behind the desk with his hat on. He is the son of the famous Ridgeways’ Late Joys Revue that led to the Players Theatre. He looks at my papers. “So, you play the trumpet. Do you play it well?”
“Well, er loudly.”
“Do you read music?”
“Yes, and the Daily Herald.”
He smiled. He would find me a place in ‘one of our orchestras’. I was taken by a Corporal Gron, who looked like an unflushed lavatory, and shown to a billet on the first floor, a room with forty single beds around the walls. In them were forty single men. This being Sunday, they were of a religious order that kept them in kip until midday. I drop my kit on a vacant bed, and it collapses to the floor. “That’s why it’s vacant,” laughed Corporal Gron, who laughed when babies fell under buses. Next bed is Private Graham Barlow. He helps me repair the bed with some string and money. Nice man — he played the accordion. Noel Coward said, “No gentleman would ever play the accordion.”
I had no job as such, and as such I had no job. Breakfast was at 8.30, no parade, hang around, lunch, hang further around, tea, extended hanging around, dinner and bed. The CPA Complex had the same ground plan as the Palace of Minos at Knossos, consisting of rehearsal rooms, music stores, costume stores, scenery dock and painting area, Wardrobe Mistress, Executive offices. People went in and were never seen again. The company was assembled from soldier artistes who had been down-graded. They would be formed into concert parties and sent on tour to entertain those Tommies who weren’t down-graded. The blind leading the blind. The facilities were primitive, the lavatories were a line of holes in the ground. When I saw eighteen soldiers squatting/balancing over black holes with straining sweating faces for the first time, they looked like the start of the hundred yards for paraplegic dwarfs.
My first step to ‘fame’ came when I borrowed a guitar from the stores. I was playing in the rehearsal room when a tall cadaverous gunner said, “You play the guitar then?” This was Bill Hall. If you’ve ever seen a picture of Niccolò Paganini, this was his double. What’s more, he played the violin and played it superbly; be it a Max Bruch Concerto or I’ve Got Rhythm, he was a virtuoso. But bloody scruffy. We teamed up just for the fun of it, and in turn we were joined by Johnny Mulgrew, a short Scots lad from the Recce Corps; as he’d left them they were even shorter of Scots. Curriculum Vitae: Pre-war he played for Ambrose and the Inland Revenue. In the 56 Recce in N. Africa. Trapped behind enemy lines at Madjez-el-Bab. Lay doggo for forty-eight hours in freezing weather. Got pneumonia. Down-graded to B2…
Together we sounded like Le Hot Club de France. When we played, other musicians would come and listen to us — a compliment — and it wasn’t long before we were lined up for a show.
In the filling-in time, I used to play the trumpet in a scratch combination. It led to my meeting with someone from Mars, Gunner Se
combe, H., singer and lunatic, a little myopic blubber of fat from Wales who had been pronounced a loony after a direct hit by an 88-mm gun in North Africa. He was asleep at the time and didn’t know about it till he woke up. General Montgomery saw him and nearly surrendered. He spoke like a speeded up record, no one understood him, he didn’t even understand himself; in fact, forty years later he was knighted for not being understood.
The Officers’ Club, Naples. We were playing for dancing and cabaret, the latter being the lunatic Secombe. His ‘music’ consisted of some tatty bits of paper, two parts, one for the drums and one for the piano — the rest of us had to guess. We busked him on with ‘I’m just wild about Harry’. He told us he had chosen it because his name was Harry, and we said how clever he was. He rushed on, chattering, screaming, farting, sweat pouring off him like a monsoon, and officers moved their chairs back. Then the thing started to shave itself, screaming, chattering and farting; he spoke at high speed; the audience thought he was an imported Polish comic, and many wished he was back in Warsaw being bombed. Shaving soap and hairs flew in all directions, then he launched into a screaming duet with himself, Nelson Eddie and Jeanette Macdonald, but you couldn’t tell him apart. A few cries of ‘hey hup’ and a few more soapy farts, and he’s gone, leaving the dance floor smothered in shaving soap. His wasn’t an act, it was an interruption.
The dance continues, and officers are going arse over tip in dozens. “No, not him,” they’d say when Secombe’s name came up for a cabaret.
Secombe, December 1945 — having cleared the Officers’ Club, Naples, with screaming, raspberries, shaving and singing — well pleased
Bill Hall. A law unto himself. He ignored all Army discipline, he ignored all civilian discipline. His regiment had despaired of him and posted him to CPA with an apology note.
Take kit parade. We are all at our beds, kit immaculately laid out for inspection. The Orderly Officer reaches Gunner Hall. There, on an ill-made bed, where there should be 19 items of army apparel, are a pair of socks, three jack-knives, a vest, a mess tin and a fork. The officer looks at the layout. He puts his glasses on.
OFFICER:
Where is the rest of your kit?
GUNNER HALL:
It’s on holiday, sir.
Apart from Gunner Secombe, CPA contained other stars to be, including Norman Vaughan, Ken Platt and Les Henry, (who later formed The Three Monarchs).
The CPA Personnel, including Spike Milligan (No. 1) and Harry Secombe (No. 2)
There were, of course, failures. Private Dick Scratcher, down-graded with flat feet, was billed as The Great Zoll, the Voltage King. He was given a try-out at the now recovering Officers’ Club. His act consisted of a ‘Death Throne’ made out of wood, cardboard and silver paper, with a surround of light bulbs. On a sign above was a warning: DANGER 1,000,000 VOLTS. The Great Zoll entered as a ‘Sultan’, with a turban that looked more like a badly bandaged head, and struck a ‘gong’ which was a dustbin lid painted with cheap silver paint: with its edge cut off it gave a flat ‘CLANK’. He was assisted by the driver/opera singer clad in a loin cloth, his body stained brown with boot polish. The ‘Sultan’ would be strapped into the chair with silver straps, telling us all the while in Chinese with a north-country accent: “Chop, chop, my assistant, Tong Bing, now strap me in Death t’chair, and throw switch, and send million volts through my t’body.” Tong Bing then chants some mindless tune which has nothing to do with the tune we are playing. Various bulbs go on and off as the great switch is thrown, the voltage meter goes up and down, the Great Zoll speaks: “By power of t’mind I will resist the power of t’electricity.” He stares into space, then magnesium flashes go off and fill the club with choking smoke. The final magnesium flash has been placed too near The Great Zoll, it sets fire to his trousers. Tong Bing is trying to beat it out and the room is filled with watery-eyed coughing officers trying to escape.
Dick Scratcher’s name went down next to Secombe’s in the ‘never again’ list. After the war, Harry was appearing at the Palladium and was visited by the Great Zoll and his wife. Harry noticed that the woman’s legs and arms were bandaged. “I’ve changed the act,” says the Great Zoll. “I’m into knife throwing.”
The best pianist in the CPA was Johnny Bornheim. Late nights we would play in the rehearsal room with a bottle of wine as company. Bornheim was a furrier in civvy street, but should have been a concert pianist. Self-taught, he could literally play anything.
He was fascinated with Bill Hall. He once pointed out, “No one has ever seen Bill Hall’s body alive!” True, he only showered after dark and likewise never took his clothes off with the light on. Was he hiding something? We decided to raid Bill Hall’s body.
In darkness we wait by his bed. Comes 0200 hours, Bill shuffles in, he is undressing, he is down to his shirt and socks. Before he can enter his pit, we signal the lights on, and six of us seize him, remove his remaining garments, and hold him down, naked, struggling and swearing. I hold a clipboard with an anatomical list. Bornheim goes to work with a stick. He starts at the top.
“Head, one, with stray hairs attached plus dandruff.”
“Check.”
“Earoles and wax, two.”
“Check.”
“Neck, scrawny with Adam’s apple, one.”
“Check.”
“Chest, sunken with stray hairs, one.”
“Check.”
“You bastards,” he is yelling and struggling.
“Legs, thin with lumps on knees, two.”
“Check.”
Bornheim elevates Hall’s scrotum on the stick. “Cobblers, red with purple tinges, two.”
“Check.”
“Chopper with foreskin attached, one.”
“Check.”
We released him and he chased us, hurling his and other people’s boots. A drunken Secombe enters, sees the naked wraith, embraces him. “My, you’re looking lovely in the moonlight, Amanda.” Amanda says Piss Off. Hall has to fight off the insane raspberrying Welshman. If only his Queen could have seen him that night.
As to Trooper Johnny Mulgrew of Glasgow, he had a wicked sense of humour; his idea of a joke was a huge beaming woman in a wheelchair being pushed through Hyde Park by a dying cripple. Always good for a laugh.
’Over the Page’
This was the show that launched the Bill Hall Trio. It was the brainchild of Captain Hector Ross, whose play Men in Shadow I had destroyed at Maddaloni. It was sheer luck: one of the acts for Over (he Page had withdrawn at the last moment, a sort of theatrical Coitus Interruptus. Could the Trio fill in? Yes. I knew that just playing jazz never was a winner, so I persuaded the wardrobe to give us the worst ragged costumes we could find. I worked out some patter and introductions. I never dreamed we would be anything more than just ‘another act’. The set for Over the Page was a huge book.
Over the Page stage set
The artistes were a mixture of Italian professionals and soldier amateurs. Monday December 6th 1945 the show opened at the Bellini Theatre to a packed house. The write-up says it all:
Over the Page orchestra
The male and female chorus from Over the Page
’Over the page’ is brught, funny’
Something new in stage entertainment is the Ensa-A.W.S. production Over the Page, showing this week at the Bellini. Presented as musical magazine, it is bright and colourful with no lack of comic relief.
Hit of the show in Naples so far has been Bill Hall’s Trio, consisting of Bill himself on the violin, Spike Milligan (guitar) and Jock Mullgrew (bass). On Monday night they were called back for two encores, and exihibited an amazing ability for playing first-rate hot music in grand comedy style. They also accompany Donna Tella, a popular young singing discovery from Rome.
What the paper said: excerpt from the Union Jack, December 12 1945 (transcribed newspaper cutting)
We were one incredible hit. When we came off, we were stunned. I couldn’t believe that of all that talent out there,
we had topped the lot. After the show, a Lieutenant Reg O’List of CPA came backstage. He had been a singer at the Windmill in London, which was rather like being a blood donor in a mortuary. He thinks we’re great. Can he take us to dinner? God, we were in the big time already. Off the Via Roma is a wonderful pasta restaurant, we’ll love it. Great! Lieutenant O’List does it in style, we go in a horse-drawn carriage. Bill Hall plays his violin as we drift down the Via Roma. Wow! Life is good. The restaurant is all one can dream of: the waiters wear white aprons, the tables have red and white check cloths, there’s an oil lamp on every table, a mandolin band playing. As soon as we enter the waiters sweep us up in a cushion of hospitality. “Si accomodo, accomodo,” a bottle of wine with the manager’s compliments, thank you very much with our compliments. Giddy with success and a free dinner we eat a mountain of spaghetti. Reg O’List can’t stop telling us how good we are and we can’t stop agreeing with him. He can’t believe we are just the result of a chance meeting in a barrack room. Can we play some jazz after dinner? Yes. “Hey! I know! why don’t we put on a show?” etc! The customers stop eating, they cheer and clap, encore, encore. Free wine is slopping out of us. Enough is enough. Reg O’List is now very pissed; he will do his Windmill Act; he starts to sing ‘Begin the Beguine’; he has a powerful shivery square voice.