“A little something for you lads,” he said.
“Ten bob?” said Fildes painfully. “Couldn’t we raffle it?”
“Now then lads, remember there’s a war on,” Said Martin pocketing the rest.
That night, by a flickering candle, we all swore allegiance to Karl Marx. No matter what, next dance, unless we got paid more, we’d play the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto!
On pay nights most of us headed for the pubs where, apart from drinking, a lot of singing was done by the battery duettists, Gunners White and Devine. This was a very popular one:
I paid my entrance fee
To see that tattooed she
She had Sir Hubert Tree
Tattooed upon her knee
She had a great big Union Jack
Tattooed upon her back
And down below On her big toe
Jack Johnson done in black
She had a battleship
Tattooed upon her hip
And where I could not see
A map of Germany
She had a picture of Harry Lauder
Right across where she gets broader
And as a mixture
She had a picture
Of her home in Tenersee.
White and Devine were great fans of the band and travelled everywhere with us. Devine, who fancied himself as a ‘Bing Crosby’ in uniform, often took vocals.
In the months to come we enlivened many a lonely military camp. We saw life. In Upper Dicker, we played for a dance-cum-orgy. Couples were disappearing into the tall grass having it off and then coming back to the dance. God knows how many Coitus Interrupti the Hesitation Waltz caused, but we heard screams from behind the trees.
Music has strange effects on drunks: one lunatic ripped open his battle-dress, pointed to a scar on his chest, and shouted “Dunkirk! you bloody coward.” He had a face made from red plasticine by a child of three, that or his parachute didn’t open. “Do you hear me, you bloody coward. Dunkirk…” he kept saying. I’ve no idea what he meant. I confused him by giving him the ladies’ spot prize. A fight broke out with the Canadians. They were all massive.
“How do you get such huge men?” I asked one.
“We go in the forest, shake the trees and they fall out,” he said.
A worried officer rushed up.
“Can you play ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’?”
“No sir, after an hour I get tired.”
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
In despair we played The King, shouted ‘Everyone back to their own beds’, and departed.
On Bexhill’s sea front stood the De La Warr Pavillion, named after Lord De La Warr Pavillion, a fine modern building with absolutely no architectural merit at all. It was opened just in time to be bombed. The plane that dropped it was said to have been chartered by the Royal Institute of Architects, piloted by Sir Hugh Casson with John Betjeman as bomb aimer. The invasion of England, though always imminent, did not stop the reopening of the Pavillion for dances by the local Rotary Club. The band could now play on a genuine stage, and ‘N.A.A.F.I. Piano-ridden’ Edgington could perform on a concert Steinway Grand. Our M.C. was Mr Courtney who was ‘well known in Bexhill’. He owned an antique shop, and when short of stock put his suits in the window. Occasionally he sang ‘Might Lak a Rose’ in a quavering light baritone (or mighty like a baritone, in a quivering rose), which suggested a maladjusted truss. He told us he thought Charlie Kunz was the greatest Jazz pianist in the world, in his own words, “He’s a sort of white Duke Ellington.”
During the months leading into the winter of 1940 the D Battery were the centre of night life in war-ridden, sinful Bexhill-on-Sea. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was taking the first steps into Show Business.
Harry Edgington in brown study
Driver Doug Kidgell, as the Khaki Pimpernel
Driver Kidgell playing the drums as though they weren’t stolen
The memorable first wartime dance in Bexhill Old Town Church Hall, and the band’s first engagement
RELIGION
Men in uniform can’t really be considered religious, unless it be a Christian profundity that makes a Gunner say Jesus Christ! when he drops a shell on his foot. Even the Battery Chaplain was suspect. One night I found him face downwards near the Officers Billets, singing ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’; granted, it may have been a new way of holding services during heavy shelling. The Catholics had occasional visits from Father Holything who seemed horrified at the thought of any soldier having sexual intercourse.
“Be careful of strong drink my sons,” he warned. “Bear in mind it excites the sexual appetites, therefore if you see a comrade drunk, bring him home and bathe the parts in cold water.” It was great to know how to be a Christian, all you needed was an erection and a bucket of cold water. He warned, “Avoid loose women.” I never told him straight the women I knew were so loose they were falling to bits. Anyway, we had nothing to do with loose women, we were all sleeping with highly respectable officers’ wives, whose husbands were at the war. In our rough soldier way we were trying to comfort them. One man was comforting so many he was excused clothes.
FOOD
Oh those military meals! Breakfast could be recognized by shape, sausage, yes, but lunch! The white watery mound could be spuds, but what was the heap of steaming green and black, and that knoll of boiled grey stuff that shuddered if it saw you. Visits from orderly officers did little to help.
Officer:
Any complaints?
Soldier:
Yes sir, it’s this.
Officer:
What’s wrong with ‘this’.
Soldier:
Nothing wrong but what is it?
Officer calls the head cook.
Officer:
Sergeant. This man wants to know what this is.
Cook:
That sir, is a ‘Frappe Mystique a la Aldershot!’
We implemented our meals in the N.A.A.F.I. with Cornish pasties, or the eternal doughnuts. In early days doughnuts were liberally dusted with castor sugar, but as war went on that stopped. War was coming nearer even for doughnuts. The cook-house staff consisted of two ex-dustmen and the ‘Chef’, Sergeant Paddy Harris, with multiple B.O., black finger-nails and halitosis; medieval court poisoners couldn’t have picked a more lethal trio. I could never help feeling they were paid by the Ministry of Bacteriological Warfare. Sergeant Harris was a regular. He went every morning without fail. In 1923 he was down-graded to B.2 because of varicose veins that made his legs look like maps of England’s Inland Waterways. Still a citizen of the Republic, he spent his leave in Dublin. As far as the Irish were concerned, he was sabotaging the British war effort, and the way he cooked they weren’t far out. Every evening, Harris could be seen leaving the billet, his Service Dress stuffed with tins of fruit, cream, and other wartime goodies that he laid at the feet of his mistress prior to coitus. When he first met her, she was a little six stone darling; when we left Bexhill two years later she weighed fourteen stone and owned a chain of grocery stores.
In 1940 he returned from leave with a piglet in his kit-bag. He intended to fatten the animal, and serve it to the Battery for Christmas dinner in exchange for some simple seasonal gift, like fifteen shillings a portion. The pig was called Brian Born. I asked why. “Why?” said Harris sitting up in his reeking bed. “To keep alive the legend of a King.” He threw up his right arm in a romantic gesture, at the same time scratching his arse with his romantic left. He stood up pulling on shattered, semen-ridden underpants: “The blood of kings runs through all Irishmen.” He opened the window and spat: “You dirty buggery” came a cry from below. Harris’s billet was…well, it appeared to have been bombed by block-busters filled with unemptied Arab dust-bins. The only thing of any merit was a picture of Jesus stuck up with a drawing pin; it bore the legend, ‘I will bless the house in which this picture is glorified’. I wonder what went wrong. The piglet. It was housed in an old Libby’s Milk bo
x lined with rubbish. The keeping of pigs in barracks was forbidden, so Harris gave the creature two coats of white paint with patches of brown that near as dammit made it look like a Cocker Spaniel. The pig got bigger and had to be repainted as a Great Dane. At night it went foraging. Lieutenant Sudden awoke one night. He phoned the guard house. “Am I drunk?” he enquired. “No sir,” said the duty N.C.O. “In which case,” said Budden, “there’s a pig painted brown eating my boots.”
We tried to tether the animal but it broke the chain. There was only one solution, dig a pit six foot deep and drop the animal in; sensing our intentions it broke free, and dashed squealing over the football pitch. Seeing our Christmas dinner disappearing, we gave chase. Heading up the road to St Leonards it suddenly turned right. “No! My God, no!” said Bombardier Donaldson as the pig rushed up the steps and through the front door of the ‘Belgravia Guest House for Refined Gentlefolk’.
Screams issued forth, crockery was breaking. Entering the hall we saw chaos! A bald man lying face down on his back with a grandfather clock across him. A fat bursting woman was clutching a gross of Pekinese; “My darlings,” she trilled through a rouged hole. On the landing a fine old man with a rolled newspaper was flailing away at nothing and shouting “Shoooooo.” A toothless crone issued forth stirring a sauce pan of thrice-watered porridge. Behind her a blind man holding up sagging trousers appeared at the W.C. door. “There’s no paper, Mrs Hurdle,” he said. “In the cellar!” screamed a refined voice. Down we raced. Up we came, with the blind man bound hand and foot, still looking for paper. “It’s the wrong one,” said Harris. Down we raced again. A woman on the top stair kept shouting,: “Mind my bottled quinces.” At last we got the animal up. We were covered in cuts, bruises and bottled quince. The pig was unmarked. With a noose around his neck he was as quiet as a lamb. “Who,” said a vast landlady, “who is gwoing to pway fwor all this dwamage! eh?” Sergeant Harris, braces dangling, bowed low. “That’s no bloody good,” she said.
“Madam, every last penny will be repaid,” said Harris. He took her vile hand, kissed it, passing on his hereditary .gingivitis. Somewhere on the steppes of Russia squadrons of Red tanks were advancing on all fronts. But England too was in there somewhere.
Hastings had had the pleasure of sounding their sirens about fifty times—Eastbourne about forty, but Bexhill sulked unrecognised. Then it came.
A Wednesday night, late in March 1940, the band was doing a gig at a private house in Pevensey Drive. A well heeled ex-army major was throwing a house party on the occasion of his daughter’s coming-of-age. It had the cobwebs of a dying empire: men wore slightly dated evening dress, and there was one joker from the Blues with Cavalry spurs; the ladies were in gowns of chiffon that seemed straight from the wardrobe of Private Lives. It was pretty horsey, but not outrageously so, though I’m glad to say the moment we played a 6/8 they all did ‘cocking of the legs’↓ and shouted ‘Och Ayes’.
≡ An English version of the Highland Fling, see page 100.
As a parting gift our host gave us each a fiver. We stood stunned. “I’m sorry,” said Kidgell, “we haven’t any change sir.” He waved us off. Outside, in the dark, we loaded our gear on to the fifteen hundredweight truck. Looking up I saw the night was alive with stars. In the Eastern sky I could make out Saturn, Pegasus, Castor and Pollux. I could hear the distant sound of sea washing the pebbled beaches of Pevensey. The Romans must have heard it once. We drove back in silence until Alf Fildes spoke. “Five pounds? He’ll ask for it back when he sobers up!” It was gone one o’clock when we rolled ourselves in our blankets for the ‘big black’ (as Kidgell called sleep): we drifted off talking about the gig.
“Did you see that twit trying to do the Big Apple—what about that bird with the big Bristols!—I must of had six doubles—Five pounds!——Cor! Wish we had more gigs like that! For Christ’s sake don’t tell Martin, he’ll confiscate it! Lovely piano—Here! you got lost in the middle eight of ‘Undecided’—I don’t know what happened—I thought I was playing ‘Hot and Anxious’…” gradually the talk faded—silence—night; but the time for Bexhill’s siren was nigh! Somewhere in the wee wee hours a voice, “Everybody on parade at the double!” The voice of Sergeant Dawson bellowed us awake. The local air-raid sirens were going. At last! Bexhill had come into the war! In the dark we stumbled into our clothes: “Steel helmets, gas capes and respirators on!” roared a voice.
“Oh, Christ!” said Devine, “we’re going to be bombed and gassed.”
“Thank God! I couldn’t stand this all again.”
“Come on,” urged Dawson, “don’t fuck about.” My Mickey Mouse watch↓ said 3.30 a.m.! Christ!
≡ I won this by entering a colouring contest in Mickey Mouse Weekly! I put my age down as eleven and won a prize.
We were trooped into the Naffi Hut, faceless in gas masks, cocooned in gas capes, the epitome of Military Efficiency. Nobody knew who was who. What must have been the B.S.M. held up the nominal roll board and was calling the names out when he realised he couldn’t be heard. He raised the gas mask and started to re-call the roll: we answered but likewise, in turn, we couldn’t lie heard. Captain Martin, who’d had enough, took off his mask: “All take your masks off or we’ll be here all bloody night.”
The roll was called.
“Right! gas masks on again!”
We all stood like dummies. We could hear no planes. Several minutes passed. B.S.M. slipped his mask up: “Stand at Ease.” We stood at ease. Several more minutes passed. Leather Suitcase arrived on the scene looking flushed and pissed with his pyjamas showing out of the bottoms of his trousers. For his benefit B.S.M. called the roll again. There we stood. This was our first air-raid warning. It became evident that, having roused us, nobody quite knew what to do with us. Sirens were going the length of the South Coast. “It’s all Bexhill’s bloody fault,” said Chalky White. Eventually the eye-pieces on Suitcase’s gas mask steamed up: he removed it and looked at his watch. “Well, I think that’s enough,” he said. “Parade dismiss Sarn’t-Major,” and we all trooped off to bed.
Sergeant Harris’s method of smuggling tinned food through the British Lines at Bexhill
APPLICATION FOR RAF PILOT
About now, of course, the heroes of the war were the R.A.F. Pilots. It made you green with envy on leave. All the beautiful birds went out with pilots. I couldn’t stand it any more. I volunteered for the Air Force. I had to be interviewed by Leather Suitcase.
“I hear you want a transfer, Milligan.”
“Yes sir, I want to join the R.A.F.”
“Ah yes, those are the ones that fly.”
“Yes sir, they go up whereas we just go along.”
“Have you ever flown before?”
“No sir, but I’ve been upstairs on a bus on my own.”
“No, what I said was, have you ever flown before. I didn’t say anything about buses.”
“No sir, I have never flown before.”
“Your father has written to me about it, and I will recommend you for a transfer.”
In February 1941 I was called for an interview to Kingsway House. I waited in a room with about forty other hopefuls. After an hour I was called before a man who appeared to be wearing a pair of hairy outstretched wings under his nose.
“.I see you want to join the R.A.F.”
“Yes, sir, I have the character and temperament that is admirably suited to that arm.”
“What would you like to be.”
“A pilot, sir.”
“Want to go out with pretty girls, eh?”
After a stringent Physical Examination they told me. “Sorry, your eyesight isn’t up to what we need for a pilot; however, we have a number of vacancies for rear gunners.”
“No sir, I don’t want to be at the back, I want to drive.”
“I’m sorry lad, that’s all we can offer you.”
Letter from my major to my father
I stood up, saluted smartly and exited. As I walked down the corrido
r to the street, I saw what was possibly the ugliest W.A.A.F. I had ever seen. “Hello cheeky,” she said as I passed her. Perhaps they were right, perhaps I had got bad eyesight. I caught an evening train back to Bexhill, and arrived to be informed by Edgington that he had read in the Melody Maker that Harry Parry, of the BBC Radio Rhythm Club, was holding auditions to find the best unknown jazz musicians—the winners were to make a recording for. broadcasting on the BBC. We wrote off to Harry Parry, c/o BBC, London. We received a reply saying could we come down on the next weekend. We approached Leather Suitcase.
“You’re going to do what?”
“Do an audition for the BBC.”
“You can’t join them! They’re civvies!”
I explained as best I could to him, bearing in mind that contemporary opinion of jazz in those days was almost the same as that of cannabis today. However, he let me go, and the following weekend, excited out of my mind, I arrived at BBC Studios, Maida Vale. Briefly, I was picked as the best trumpet player, and along with the winning alto, trombone and tenor players, we cut a disc. The pianist for this was the then almost unknown George Shearing, and for an hour, along with Harry Parry, we recorded six sides. It was an unforgettable day for me. I felt that I had been accepted as a jazz musician, and before I left, George Shearing said, “I hope we meet and play again.” Man, that was praise enough.