Having worked my way through all the volumes of Clive James’ autobiography, I’m now doing the same with Spike Milligan’s war memoirs. I’ve just finished number four, which finishes with him being wounded in action while fighting in Italy. That was effectively the end of the war for him.
I read all of Milligan’s books a couple of times as a teenager and young adult, and I can see now that I wasn’t really paying attention to where he was and what he was doing in the wider context of the Second World War, I was too busy enjoying all the barrack room humour and the practical jokes. So this time I’m making an effort to look up all the places he mentions (thank you, Google maps) and the history of who was fighting who, and what happened (thank you, Wikipedia).
I’ve found out, for example, that when Milligan was fighting in North Africa, he came in towards the end of that campaign, when Axis forces were being squeezed out of Algeria and Tunisia. I hadn’t previously realised that the fall of Tunis to Allied forces was a sort of German version of Dunkirk, minus the miraculous escape. Over 250,000 German and Italian troops were taken as prisoners of war in the Battle of Tunisia, including most of the Afrika Korps.
In Italy, Milligan was fighting not far from the infamous battle for Monte Cassino, as the Allies fought their way from the beach landings at Salerno, up towards Rome.
I’ve also been paying more attention to what he was actually doing (when he wasn’t playing the trumpet and infuriating the officers). As a signaller in the Royal Artillery he was running telephone cables from control positions to where the heavy guns were positioned and up to observation posts sometimes miles away on remote hillsides. At other times he was relaying messages from observers back to the gun positions, by telephone and with wireless equipment - while being shelled and dive-bombed by Germans.
At the end of the fourth book Milligan was injured while trying to carry replacement batteries up the side of a hill to an observation position. He was hit by fragments from an enemy mortar shell, which left him shell-shocked and unable to continue fighting. Not so funny.
I’m going to read something else for a bit and then carry on with volume five in a few days.
-R