“Attenzione,” shouts the driver. “Coltello.” (Look out he’s got a knife.) We leap out and set off hot foot. He is shouting something in Italian that sounds like ‘My mother keeps legless goats’ that can’t be right. Why are we running away from a man whose mother keeps legless goats? Cowards all!
I suddenly stop, turn, thrust my hand inside my battledress pocket and whip out an imaginary pistol.
“Attenzione!” I shout. “Pistole!” He stops in his tracks and runs away. He could have sung ‘Lae thar piss tub dawn bab’ but didn’t. Very good Milligan. The day ended with a pointed finger. It wasn’t the end of a perfect day, but it was an end. “Who the fuck was he?” said Bornheim, much much further down the hill.
Civilain Status
The Central Pool of Artists is changed to The Combined Services Entertainment. Why? I suppose it’s the result of a ‘meeting’. In its wake we, the Bill Hall Trio, are being offered officer status and wages if, when we are demobbed, we sign with the CSE for six months. Hedonists, we all say yes. Officer status? Cor Blimey! All the bloody months in the line and you become Lance-Bombardier. Play the guitar in perfect safety, you become an officer. If I learned the banjo and the tuba I could become a Field-Marshal!
I wrote home and told my delighted parents. Mother proudly informed the neighbours that her son was a ‘Banjo-playing Officer’.
Copy of letter asking us to stay on six month contract
The signature looks like ‘Waolb Petal’. I didn’t know we had one. Now, upgrading to officer status caused problems -though still not due for demob till August, we jumped the gun and donned civvies — officers’ peaked caps, with green and gold shoulder flash CSE. It was a culture shock for the Officers’ Club in Naples when Gunner Bill Hall entered its portals.
“‘ere! where you goin’?” said the door sergeant, to someone who looked like a dustman.
“I am going in,” said Hall. “Where you goin’?”
The sergeant looked at the thin scruffy apparition in crumpled khaki drill with a fall of cigarette ash on the shirt front. “This club is for officers,” he said, pointing to the door.
“I am a bleedin’ orficer,” said Hall, pointing to himself.
The sergeant demands identification. I watched his face gradually crumple as he read the authorization slip. He gave a sob and walked away. The barman treats Hall like a leper and moves the fly papers nearer.
In his wake, the new-found Officer Hall left a series of broken club secretaries. One offered to sell him a suit, another resigned. Several asked Hall for medical certificates. Mulgrew and his evil sense of humour relished the confrontations. He told how on one occasion at an Officers’ Bar, on the approach of Hall, they put newspapers down. He was popularly known in the Officers’ Clubs as ‘Oh Christ, here he comes’, or ‘Thank Christ, there he goes’.
Barbary Coast
Rumours of another show are in the offing. Raymond Agoult and his wife asked me how would I like to ‘write a musical’. I said ‘sitting down’. The theme was to be Anne Bonney, the lady pirate, and her lover Calico Jack. I remember the opening chorus. Lyrics —
There’ll be ten thousand dollars
For anyone who collars
Calico Jack.
CHORUS: Calico Jack!
Again it was too ambitious financially. “God, Milligan, we’d have to sell the Navy to pay for it,” said Captain O’List.
There’s an alternative — it’s to be called Barbary Coast, a series of variety acts done in an 1880s Bowery Bar setting. The MC is Jimmy Molloy, a forty-year-old Crash Bang Wallop insult-type comic. Jimmy is overweight and over here. The Bill Hall Trio will perform ‘as directed’, so we wait, directionless, while the wheels of power turn.
Meantime, I must prepare for my civilian status. I must buy clothes to adorn my civilian body and shoes for my civilian feet. Drawing out my savings, I course the Via Roma; for the life of me I could not understand how the Italians could produce such luxurious clothes. There’s a wealth of real silk, pure wool, pure cotton garments. I chose a dark blue corduroy jacket and a lighter pair of trousers, a black and white check sporting jacket with ‘British’ flannels, three white silk shirts and a blue satin tie, a white polo-neck sweater, all of which would hide my post-war back-up army underwear. One thing I never bought — shoes. I had a pair of huge ‘sensible’ brown brogues that made my feet look five times the size, shaped like marrows, apparently inflated and about to burst.
“Wot yer want ter buy all that crap for?” says Bill Hall. “You’ll only draw attention to yourself.” I understood him not.
Me in civvies standing against the statue of Goethe in Rome
The Voodoo Moon Club
We would use the rehearsal room, yes! A dance! ORs only! Bornheim, George Puttock and myself took it upon ourselves to turn the room into a London night club. We begged, borrowed, stealed, bribed. I wanted it to look like a giant aquarium. I blacked out windows, filled the space with underwater features, rocks, etc., all from the scenery department, put low-key lighting in, then covered the whole with a large piece of aquamarine perspex. We stapled plain white paper to the scruffy table-tops, hung velvet drapes all round the walls, put green red and blue bulbs into the lights, got the chippies to make music stands with lighting cut-outs with the words VOODOO MOON, that went — like Hollywood marriages — on-off.
Food; our hermetically sealed food flasks we topped with spaghetti bought locally, bottles of local red plonk. Where to serve the food from? Of course! the nearest room — the lavatory opposite. We set up a serving hatch and a masking curtain. From the local ENSA show we try to get Hy Hazell, a strapping in-favour-at-the-time cabaret singer. To wait on table we had massed Marias. Word got around and officers asked if they could come. Yes. “Make the bastards pay,” said Bill Hall. So we ‘Made the Bastards Pay’.
Puttock wants to know. “Why has it got to be an Aquarium?” What does he think it ought to be? He doesn’t know.
The Bill Hall Quintet in the Voodoo Moon Club
Well, if you like we can get it done up as an ‘I don’t know club’, and he can stand at the bloody door and when people say what’s going on here, he can say “I don’t know.”
I trap my Maria while she is bending down and she is well pleased. Do you still love me Maria? Oh si, si, si, sempre, sempre. Good. Can she and her clutch of Marias act as waitresses on the night? No money, but they’ll get danced, groped and allowed to walk home free of charge. Will I marry her and take her to Inghilterra? Of course, yes, si si. The Great Zoll, the master of magic electricity and twit, “can he help serve the spaghetti from the Karzi?” We need a touch of magic, yes, can he dress up as a sultan for it? Of course, the Spaghetti Sultan, yes, we’ll give him that billing. The scenic artist knocks up a sign to go over the Karzi:
SPAGHETTI NOW BEING SERVED BY THE GREAT ZOLL, 200 LIRE.
I phone the ENSA hotel. Can I speak with Miss Hy Hazell? Un momento. Several un momentos later she speaks. Can she do a cabaret for us? Yes, is there transport? Yes, trams stop at the bottom of the road. Can she bring friends? Yes. How many? Twenty-seven! Sorry, that’s too many. OK, then do the bloody cabaret yourself. Of course she can bring twenty-seven.
“We don’t want to play orl bloody evening,” says Hall, who has a bint coming. Len Singleton, pianist, comes to the rescue. Not to worry, he will pick up a scratch combination. Name? Oh anything, how about ‘Singleton’s Black and Whites’?
Perfect, the entire band turns out to be white. The Karzis do niff a little, can we lay it to rest? OK, can the massed Marias wash it with phenyl? Si, si, if I’ll marry her and take her to England. Si, si, yes yes, and a quick squeeze of them both.
The Duty Officer Lieutenant Higgins is asking questions. “What’s going on?”
I explain that it’s a fine thing we are doing in our spare time to raise the morale of the troops and etc etc etc, and will he go away. Why have we blacked out the windows, the airraids have stopped. We know sir, but you never know. Have
we got permission? Yes. Who from? We don’t know yet, but rest assured it will be somebody.
Comes the night, it was a bomb-out success. Finished at 0400! Bornheim, Puttock and I made 10,000 lire each and as many enemies.
At the Voodoo Moon Club, the Riding High Band sit in. 1st Trumpet: Dave Douglas; 2nd Trumpet: Roy Duce; Alto: Billy Wells; Piano: Dennis Evans; Bass: J. Mulgrew (anything for extra money!), and the singer, Norman Lee
A Day Out
Seven of us hired a taxi and went swimming at Bagnoli. The beach was in the ancient Campi Flegrei, one time watering place of the Roman rich. A pumice-coloured beach, a few run-down bathing huts, the doors swung on rusty hinges, the cabins now used by beach whores for ‘quickies’; a dying Italian hires out worn umbrellas. Several fishing craft bob in the morning calm sea. A rip-roaring day with skylarking in and out of the sea. We hire a row boat and soon we are going in all directions; we round the headland of the Isle of Nisidia and turn into a horseshoe bay. We discover caves! Wow, it’s an omni-directional day; totally mindless, we strip off and dive off the jagged lava rocks.
Bang, bang! Bullets are flying over our heads.
“It’s World War Three and they’ve started without us,” I shouted, ducking for cover. From down the craggy hillside come armed carabinieri. They are shouting. We take to the oars and row like mad in all directions; we would have moved faster if we had just drifted. I am shouting “Ferma! Sono Inglese.”
A good-looking Italian captain, speaking like George Sanders with garlic, asks what we are doing. What a sight we make, three of us naked save shirts, two totally naked, ; one naked with socks on, me in a pair of groin-crippling underpants pretending I am Tarzan in my brown boiled boots.
“We are swimming,” I say, forgetting I am standing on land.
“This is a prohibited area,” he says.
I tell him we are prohibited people, but he doesn’t understand.
“This is a top security island,” he says, “where war criminals are being held.” I ask him what part are they being held by, but he still doesn’t understand and waves his Beretta pistol. I wave back, he is getting angry, we must leave.
In total disarray we clamber into our craft. Have you read Three Men in a Boat? — well, multiply that by seven. Everyone rowed furiously in a different direction, the boat was coming apart. As the Italians were threatening and shooing us away, the Captain said something to his men and they all burst out laughing. As they were laughing in Italian we couldn’t understand it. I looked at my motley crew and realized how lucky Captain Bligh had been.
My God! A squall blows up! Soon we are bailing for our lives! A boatman from the shore takes us in tow, we are very grateful until he asks for two hundred lire. We argue, he explains that we would never have made it back on our own.
“Fuck off,” says Barlow to a man who has just saved our lives.
What a day!
“Dear Mother, Today we went swimming and were nearly shot at by Italians and drowned, wish you were here.”
We jump aboard one of the shuttle passion waggons throbbing on the beach, filled with spent soldiers. Why are we waiting? “My mate’s having a shag in that hut.” He points to a fragile beach hut shaking backwards and forwards under the assault from within, then there’s a pause. “‘ees ‘avin a rest,” says the soldier, the hut starts to vibrate again, the door opens and out comes a weed of a soldier who gets a desultory cheer from his mates, a portly tart hoisting up her bathing costume frames in the doorway, waving him goodbye with the money.
“Orl finished shaggin’?” cries the driver, cries of yes, and we lollop forward over the sand on to the road and away. As we sped down the coast road I was stricken with the divine view and had a shot at taking a photograph. It doesn’t exactly do justice to the scene, but it’s evidence to say that I’m not making this all up.
Two years in the front line — Army food.
At end of day to a trattoria for dinner
Spike after a good dinner
The waiter who served us
Swimming starkers
June 17th 1946.
Barbary Coast opened at the Bellini Theatre: a packed house, with soldiers queuing all day. Again the Bill Hall Trio, with a lot more gags in the act, steal the show; a corps de ballet from Rome did next best -all top-class dancers and only in this show because Rome Opera House is temporarily closed.
Great write-ups the next day! Then the icing on the cake: we are to tour, but this time we are to include Venice and Vienna! Someone should have told us, “Man, these are the best days of your life, eat them slowly.”
Sunday morning, all bustle and packing kit on to the charabanc, Gunner Hall as usual is missing.
“She must be late paying him,” says Bornheim. All set, we pile on to the CSE charabanc with Umberto the fat Iti driver pinning Holy Pictures on the dashboard to ward off the devil, accidents, Protestants and the husband of the woman he is knocking off.
It’s a sparkling day, the sun streaming through the holes in Bornheim’s underwear. “What’s this Venice like?” he says. I tell him when you step out the front door you go splash! People don’t take dogs for a walk, they take fish. Wasn’t the city resting on piles? Yes, it was agony for the people underneath.
Lieutenant Priest boards the charabanc. “Answer your names,” he says.
“Bornheim G.”
“Sah,” we all shout.
“Mulgrew J?”
“Sah,” we all answer.
He tears up the list in mock defeat; the charabanc and its precious cargo of piss artists proceeds forth. We inch thru the unforgettable fish market off the Piazza Capuana, displaying everything from water-fleas to tuna on the barrows. The mongers douse their catches with water. “Fools,” says Bornheim. “They’ll never revive them.” The church bells are anointing the air, each peal sending flocks of pigeons airborne on nervous wings. Through the machicolated crowds we edge, finally arriving at the peeling front of the Albergo Rabacino, which roughly translated means Rabies. Ronnie Priest flies into its front portals. He’s annoyed — the Italian ballerinas from our cast are not ready. “They had to go to holy bloody mass,” he says. We all get out and stretch our legs and are immediately beset with vendors. I am casting my eye on a tray of watches that gleam gold like the riches of Montezuma. They are in fact cheapo watches dipped in gold-plating. I knock the price down from ten million lire to ten thousand. OK, I buy the watch. Of course it doesn’t give the date, phases of the moon, high tide in Hawaii, it doesn’t light up in the dark, doesn’t give electronic peals every half hour, and it doesn’t ring like an alarm in the morning. All it does is tell the silly old time.
I paid the vendor and told him the time, I said hello to Mulgrew and told him the time, I called Bornheim over and told him the time and I wrote a letter to my mother telling her the time. Looking at the watch I realize it’s time to close this fifth volume of my War Time Trilogy. It was the year I had left the front line and found various Base Depot jobs. I had much to be thankful for and now I knew the time. In Volume Six I will tell the time and the story of my love affair with Maria Antoinette Pontani, the Italian ballerina who in a way changed my life and made me abandon my store of second-hand Army underwear. The time is 11.20 a.m.
Photo of Naples Bay — to prove it was there
Spike Milligan, Memoires 05 (1985) - Where Have All The Bullets Gone
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