Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (3 page)

“Whair hev yew been, and what me yew wearing civilian clothes?”

“They wouldn’t let me on the train naked sir.”

“I mean, whai aren’t you in uniform?”

“I’m not at war with anybody sir.”

“Silence when you speak to an officer,” said B.S.M.

The Major, who was fiddling with a rubber band, slid it over his finger.

“Does this mean we’re engaged sir?”

“Silence!” said B.S.M.

“I suppose,” said Suitcase, “you know you are three months late arriving?”

“I’ll make up for it sir, I’ll fight nights as well!” All these attempts at friendly humour fell on stony ground. I was marched to a bare room by a Bombardier. He pointed to a floor board.

“You’re trying to tell me something,” I said.

“Your bed, right?”

“Right.”

“Right
Bombardier!
”

“I’m a Bombardier already?”

“Oh cheeky bastard, eh? Got the very job for yew.”

He gave me a scrubbing-brush with two bristles, showed me a three acre cook-house floor and pointed down; he was still trying to tell me something. Leering over all this was the dwarf-like Battery Cook, Bombardier Nash, who looked like Quasimodo with the hump reversed. He was doing things to sausages. Three hours’ scrubbing, and the knees in my trousers went through. To make matters worse there were no uniforms in the ‘Q’ stores. I cut a racy figure on guard, dark blue trousers gone at the knee, powder blue double-breasted chalkstripe jacket, lemon shirt and white tie, all set off with steel helmet, boots and gaiters. It wasn’t easy.

“Halt! Who goes there?” I’d challenge. When they saw me the answer was, “Piss Off.” I had to be taken off guard duties. In time I got a uniform. It made no difference.

“Halt, who goes there?”

“Piss Off.”

Words can’t describe the wretched appearance of a soldier in a new battle-dress. Size had nothing to do with it. You wore what you got. Some soldiers never left barracks for fear of being seen. Others spent most of their time hiding behind trees. The garments were impregnated with an anti-gas agent that reeked like dead camels, and a water-proofing chemical that gave you false pregnancy and nausea. The smell of 500 newly kitted rookies could only be likened to an open Hindu sewerage works on a hot summer night by Delius. To try and ‘cure’ my B.D. I salted it and hung it outside in thunderstorms, I took it for walks, I hit it, in desperation, I sprayed it with Eau de Cologne, it made little difference, except once a sailor followed me home. Overcoats were a huge, shapeless dead loss. If you wanted alterations, you took it to a garage. But the most difficult part of Army Life was the 06:00 hours awakening. In films this was done by a smart bugler who, silhouetted against the dawn with the Union Jack flying, blew reveille. Not so our ‘Badgey’,↓ who stayed in bed, pushed the door open with his foot, blew reveille, then went back to sleep.

≡ Badgey: Bugler.

Very well, alone then! Gnr Milligan, 954024, defending England, June 1940

DUNKIRK

T
he first eventful date in my army career was the eve of the final evacuation from Dunkirk, when I was sent to the O.P. at Galley Hill to help the cook. I had only been in the Army twenty-four hours when it happened. Each news bulletin from BBC told an increasingly depressing story. Things were indeed very grave. For days previously we could hear the distant sound of explosions and heavy gunfire from across the Channel. Sitting in a crude wood O.P. heaped with earth at two in the morning with a Ross Rifle with only five rounds made you feel so bloody useless in relation to what was going on the other side. Five rounds of ammo, and that was between the whole O.P. The day of the actual Dunkirk evacuation the Channel was like a piece of polished steel. I’d never seen a sea so calm. One would say it was miraculous. I presume that something like this had happened to create the ‘Angel of Mons’ legend.

That afternoon Bombardier Andrews and I went down for a swim. It would appear we were the only two people on the south coast having one. With the distant booms, the still sea, and just two figures on the landscape, it all seemed very very strange. We swam in silence. Occasionally, a squadron of Spit fires or Hurricanes headed out towards France. I remember so clearly, Bombardier Andrews standing up in the water, putting his hands on his hips, and gazing towards where the B.E.F. was fighting for its life. It was the first time I’d seen genuine concern on a British soldier’s face; “I can’t see how they’re going to get ‘em out,” he said. We sat in the warm water for while. We felt so helpless. Next day the news of the ‘small armada’ came through on the afternoon news. As the immensity of the defeat became apparent, somehow the evacuation turned it into a strange victory. I don’t think the nation ever reached such a feeling of solidarity as in that week at an, other time during the war. Three weeks afterwards, a Bombardier Kean, who had survived the evacuation, was posted to us. “What was it like,” I asked him.

“Like son? It was a fuck up, a highly successful fuck up.”

The O.P., galley Hill, with the coast-guard and fishermen’s cottages at the back

SUMMER 1940

Apples be ripe,

Nut’s be brown

Petticoats up

Trousers down

(
Old Sussex Folk Song
)

Apart from light military training in Bexhill there didn’t seen to be a war on at all, it was a wonderful ‘shirts off’ summer Around us swept the countryside of Sussex. There were the August cornfields that gave off a golden halitus, each trembling ear straining up for the sun. The Land Girls looked brown am inviting and promised an even better harvest. On moonlight nights haystacks bore lovers through their primitive course by day there was shade a-plenty, oaks, horse chestnuts, willow: all hung out hot wooden arms decked with the green flags of summer.

The W.V.S. Forces Corner on the corner of Sea and Cantalupe Road was open for tea, buns, billiards, ping-pong and deserters. The Women’s Voluntary Service girls were ‘jell nice’, that is, they were undatable We tried to bait them with Woodbines disguised in a Players packet and trying to wall like John Wayne. The other excitement was watching German planes trying to knock off the radar installations at Pevensey Bombardier Rossi used to run a book on it. It was ten to one of against the towers being toppled. Weekends saw most officers off home in mufti. Apparently the same went (Or the Germans The phoney war was on. I was now a trainee Signaller, highly inefficient in worse, flags and helio lamps. My duties were simple, a week in every month at an Observation Post overlooking the Channel. We had three: Galley Hill, Bexhill; a Martello Tower, Pevernsey and Constables Farm on the Bexhill-Eastbourne Road. Most of us tried for the Martello on Pevensey Beach as the local birds were easier to lay, but you had to be quick because of the tides. My first confrontation with the enemy was an early autumn evening at Galley Hill O.P. The light was going and a mist was conjuring itself up from the Channel. I’d just finished duty and was strolling along the cliff, enjoying a cigarette; in the absence of a piano I was whistling that bloody awful Warsaw Concerto when suddenly! Nothing happened! But it had happened suddenly, mark you. A moment later I heard the unmistakable sound of a Dormer Bomber, 103 feet long, wing span 80 feet, speed 108 m.p.h., piloted by Fritz Gruber aged twenty-three with a gold filling in his right lower molar. Suddenly, below me, coming out of the mist was the Dormer, flying low to avoid radar and customs duty. I could actually see the pilot and co-pilot’s faces lit by a blue light on the instrument panel. What should I do? A pile of bricks! I grabbed one and as the plane roared over me, I threw it. Blast! Missed! But in that moment I envisaged glorious headlines:

LONE GUNNER BRINGS DOWN NAZI PLANE WITH LONE BRICK…INVESTITURE AT PALACE. MILLIGAN M.M.

And the Germans! “Mein Gott, if dis iss vot dey can do vid bricks, vot vill dey get vid guns?” They didn’t all get away. That week a Hurricane downed a Dornier on Pevensey marsh. We ran to the crash. It was going to be a bad year for the rear gunner, he was dead. The young blond pilot was being treated by the Battery Cook, Gunner Sherry, who had been discharged from the Army on grounds of Insanity, then invited to join up again on the same grounds. He held the pilot with a carving-knife. We were very short of meat. Before the RAF recovery unit arrived we knocked off anything moveable, including the dead German’s boots. The rear gunner’s Spandau was handed to Leather Suitcase who tried to raffle it: however, after discussions he decided to use it as an A.A. gun. He really was getting the hang of things. A pit was dug outside ‘Trevis’ (the officers’ billets). One morning, on the last stag (0:00 to 06:00) I heard a Dormer circling in low cloud. What a chance! I uncovered the Spandau. I could see the headlines again:

MILLIGAN DOWNS ANOTHER! KING TAKES BACK M.M. IN PART EXCHANGE FOR V.C.

A window opened. The lathered face of Leather Suitcase appeared.

“Milligan? What are you standing there for?”

“Everybody’s got to be somewhere sir.”

“What are you doing?”

“Going to have a crack at the Hun sir.”

“Don’t be a bloody fool, you’ll give our position away. Now cover up that gun before it gets spoilt.” As he spoke there was a lone explosion. The Dormer had dropped a bomb in Devonshire Square.

“You see what you’ve done,” he said, slamming the window.

He must have been worth two divisions to the Germans. It was going to be a long war. Churchill had a tough job on. It was thanks to him that we had any guns at all.

When the ‘14—‘18 War ended, Churchill said the 9.2s were to be dismantled, put in grease and stored in case of ‘future eventualities. There was one drawback. No Ammunition. This didn’t deter Leather Suitcase, he soon had all the gun crews shouting ‘BANG in unison. “Helps keep morale up,” he told visiting Alanbrooke. By luck a 9.2 shell was discovered in Woolwich Rotunda. An official application was made: in due course the shell arrived. A guard was mounted over it. The Mayor was invited to inspect it, the Mayoress was photographed alongside with a V for Victory sign; I don’t think she had the vaguest idea what it meant. A month later, application was made to H.Q. Southern Command to fire the shell. The date was set for July 2
nd
, 1940. The day prior, we went round Bexhill carrying placards.

THE NOISE YOU WILL HEAR TOMORROW AT MIDDAY WILL BE THAT OF BEXHILL’S OWN CANNON. DO NOT BE AFRAID.

Other men went round telling people to open their windows, otherwise the shock waves might break them. Even better, they were told, “Break the windows yourself and save the hanging about.” Dawn’. the great day! We were marched to a secret destination on the coast known only to us, and the enemy. Freezing, with a gathering fog, we all sat in the corner of a windy beach that was forever England. They told us, “Listen for the bang and look for the splash.” Before the visiting brass arrived the fog had obscured the view. The order now became
Listen
for the splash. Zero hour. Tension mounting. A Lance Bombardier was arrested for sneezing. A Jewish gunner fainted on religious grounds. Lieutenant Budden was stung by a bee; lashing out with his hand, he struck Captain Martin’s pipe, driving the stem down his throat, leaving just the bowl protruding from his lips and fumigating his nose. Disaster! Sergeant Dawson, A.I.↓ of Signals, reported the line to the gun position had got a break.