spike milligan monty his part in my victory

I nearly went but since the war started, my belief in a God had suffered a reverse. The war has been a religious turning point for Milligan:Ī Catholic priest visited us this evening and asked if anyone wanted Confession and Holy Communion. (Milligan was going to send them home to the soldier's mother.)

He returns to find his pack of war souvenirs was lost, with his Nazi war loot, including an Iron Cross and pornographic photographs taken from a dead German soldier in Africa. The other preferred George Formby, who 'cud play 'is bludy 'ead off.' The idea of a headless Formby fills Milligan with delight.Ī threat to desert sent to Major Jenkins, finally elicits a truck to return Milligan to his group. ' Gracie Fields,' I guffawed, 'she's as funny as a steam roller going over a baby.' 'You must be bludy thick, she's a scream.' 'Yes, I scream every time I hear her sing.' 'Ooo do you think is foony them?' ' W.C. He defends his favourite comics to a North Country soldier: Otherwise, he is so bored he volunteers for work. Although he's released in a few days, transport back to his group is not available until 19 October, during which time he gets leave in Naples and Pompeii. The next day he has a temperature of 103 and is sent to a hospital.

Milligan's Italian adventures start well, as one of their battery guns knocks the top off an enemy hill just sighting down the barrel. Sometimes the diaries of others supplement Milligan's in the text. His manager Norma Farnes wrote that she thought the next volume would never be written on their account.) Farnes wrote that Milligan's diary was kept daily, except when the fighting was too fierce but there are also days when he is too sick or bored to write. Losing patience with criticism about his veracity, the preface reads, 'I’ve spent a fortune on beer and dinners interviewing my old Battery mates, and phone calls to those overseas ran into over a hundred pounds.' Also, 'I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened.' (Following this book Milligan was even more upset, by comments from the people he wrote about. Although the humorous writing is similar, there are no ersatz communiques and almost no sketches the photographs are fewer and smaller. While this is only four months, the text is nearly as long as the three earlier volumes together. Spike Milligan's fourth volume of war memoirs, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, spans the landing in Salerno, Italy on 23 September 1943 to his being invalided.

Spike milligan monty his part in my victory