‘Halt! Who goes there?’ came the midnight challenge.
‘Hitler!’
‘Can’t be. He came in ten minutes ago.’
(Squaddie repartee in ‘”Rommel?” “Gunner Who?”: A Confrontation in the Desert’, page 31)

I didn’t know Spike Milligan’s dad was a sergeant-major in the Indian army, which explains why he had an informed view of army life long before he was conscripted into the service in 1939. I also didn’t know Spike Milligan’s actual name was Terry. We learn this on page 27. Full of autobiographical facts, it is.

‘”Rommel?” “Gunner Who?”: A Confrontation in the Desert’ was Milligan’s second volume of war autobiography, published in 1974. In these early volumes he says they will form a trilogy but in the event he ended up writing seven volumes of memoirs of the Second World War (!).

Period covered

Its predecessor, ‘Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall’, covered from the outbreak of war in September 1939 through to January 1943 – from Milligan’s call-up to the 56th Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery, and then time spent training at bases all round the south of England, before posting to Bexhill on the south coast, from which they often watched German bombers flying north to bomb London. It concludes with his regiment’s embarkation to travel by ship to North Africa in January 1943.

‘Rommel?’ ‘Gunner Who?’ picks up exactly where its predecessor left off, in January 1943 and covers a relatively short period, just until May 1943, describing increasingly intense fighting (in which Milligan’s artillery regiment was directly involved) leading up to the capture of Tunis by the Allies and the end of the Desert War on 7 May.

So whereas the Hitler book took 140 pages to cover nearly 3-and-a-half years, this one takes longer (208 pages) to cover a much shorter period (23 January to 12 May 1943, four-and-a-half months).

Sources

This is explained by the fact that Milligan uses a number of diaries as sources for the text and these give him a wealth of detailed day-by-day information to draw on (or just plain copy).

Thus the book, beneath the blizzard of gags, cartoons and silly pictures, is laid out in a basic diary form, with one or more entries for most of the days in the January to May period.

An introductory note tells us he used not only his own diary but the official regimental diary, and also the diaries of the regiment’s CO Lieutenant Colonel Chater Jack and of one Al Fildes. In addition, Milligan cites letters and photos and various other memorabilia supplied by his mates so, taken altogether, this wealth of source material explains why the entries for each individual day are so surprisingly detailed and factual, and why the whole book is longer than the first one, despite covering only a tenth of the period of time. Here’s a typical entry, combining solid factual information with a bit of humour.

April 8 1943: This way to another battle. At sunset we drove to a rendezvous with Captain Rand, Bombardier Edwards, Gunner Maunders in a Bren driven by Bombardier Sherwood, it was dark when we met. ‘We’ll sleep here tonight,’ said diminutive Captain Rand in a voice like Minnie Mouse. We slept fitfully by the roadside as trucks, tanks etc rumbled back and forth but inches from our heads. (p.157)

Broad overview

The narrative follows Spike and his fellow bombardiers in the 19th Battery as they arrive in North Africa and are posted, to begin with, at Camp X, not far from Algiers. This is staggering distance from the sea, which our boys sit in up to the waist, naked, sobering up after a heavy night, sometimes watching Algiers getting bombed by Jerry.

After 50 pages they are sent forward to a real observation post (OP) in the front line where they for the first time come under fire. Here Spike is sent on a dangerous mission to lay phone cable from the rear headquarters up to the OP. Later, during daylight, Spike watches our boys trying to hit German Tiger tanks in the plain below, comes under artillery fire and is part of a sudden retreat back to their starting position and then on to a new base.

The narrative has the feel of military action in that it is confused and the movements of his little unit generally incomprehensible. He is at the level where you just obey orders, no matter how contradictory, confusing and abrupt they seem.

There aren’t many dead bodies but his unit is attacked by Stukas, comes across burned out buildings, he talks about this or that regiment on their flanks ‘catching it’. On 8 April they stop at Djbel Mahdi before driving along the route of a Jerry retreat, past burning vehicles, some containing carbonised bodies. He and his mates keep up a stream of non-stop banter, but it’s a war book, alright. They stop to consult a map and Spike notices an Italian corpse nearby, not long dead, still oozing blood. He helps himself to his wristwatch and a not tells us he later gave it to his dad as a gift (p.158).

In the final 50 or so pages his unit is at the front, directing artillery fire and coming under repeated attack, from mortar, artillery and German planes. Right at the end his favourite officer, Lieutenant Goldsmith, is killed. Milligan remembers crying his eyes out, the text includes a crudely cut and pasted newspaper tribute from Goldsmith’s friend, playwright Terence Rattigan.

He and his mates keep up a stream of non-stop, cheeky chap banter but it’s a war book, alright.

Format

As with its predecessor, ‘Rommel?’ ‘Gunner Who?’ is a deliberately disjointed, scrapbook-style book, with the (surprisingly coherent chronological) narrative constantly being interrupted by:

• sections of spoof communications between Rommel, Hitler and other senior Germans (so-called ‘Hitlergrams’)
• Edwardian illustrations from the peak of the empire in the 1890s with silly captions scrawled on them
• Milligan’s own sketches and cartoons
• photos of his mates in the battalion
• letters home
• selections from the ‘zany’ battery newsletter and poems he wrote
• and any other stuff he can cram in

The deliberate scrapbook effect reminded me of the series of Monty Python scrapbook-style books from the 1970s (especially using pictures of stiff-upper-lipped Edwardians and adding silly captions) which were also laid out like surreal pastiches of schoolboy comics, only not as funny or as imaginative. Spike’s efforts always seemed somehow tight and clumsy. Take the Hitlergrams. These are a promising idea but woeful in practice.

Hitlergram number number 27

ADOLPH HITLER: You realise soon zer Englishers people will be crushed!
ME: It must be rush hour!
ADOLPH HITLER: Zere is no need to rush!! Soon it will be all over.
ME: Hooray! Back to civvy street!
ADOLPH HITLER: Civvy Street is no more! It was destroyed by zer bombs of mine Luftwaffe. (p.57)

Vulgar, crude, puerile, sometimes very funny

It is deliberately vulgar, crude, puerile and sometimes very funny. But often just vulgar and crude.

Suddenly, without warning, ‘Strainer’ Jones lets off with a thunderous postern blast, he had us all out of that tent in ten seconds flat. (p.22)

Farting, wanking, pissing, shitting, the subject matter of satirists and comedians since the advent of literature (see Greek and Roman comedy, Chaucer, Rabelais). There’s quite liberal use of the c word, not so much by Spike as by the very working class lads around him.

Driver Cyril puts on his boots. ”Ere, my feet ‘ave swelled.’
‘No they ‘aven’t, cunt, they’re my boots.’ (p.180)

Hoggins

But it’s hard not to feel a bit oppressed by the constant references to shagging. The book is an account of healthy young heterosexual men in their sexual prime, absolutely boiling over with hormones and randiness and talking about it all day and all night:

‘A man can never have enough hoggins. A good shag clears the custard,’ said Gunner Balfour as he wrote a tender letter home to his wife. (p.29)

Hardly a page goes by without reference to erections and groins, lads boasting about the sexual conquests, jokes about the shapes of some lads’ knobs, references to the (many) men who masturbate every night in the shared dormitories (a subject, incidentally, mentioned by Eric Newby as a common nightly occurrence at his POW camp in Love and War in the Apennines). The lads eye up every woman in sight, reminisce fondly about shagging huge numbers of birds and barmaids back in Blighty, or about more recent escapades with the Arab whores in Algiers. Here they are setting out from the base on an evening’s R&R.

A three tonner full of sexual tension rattled us towards Algiers docks. Most others were looking for women and booze. not Gunner Milligan, I was a good Catholic boy, I didn’t frequent brothels. No, all I did was walk around with a permanent erection shouting, ‘Mercy!’ (p.32)

Shagging and going on the piss and scrounging extra grub, those are these men’s central interests. Oh, and the footie.

The lazy sods! That’s all they ever think of. Booze, football and sex. (p.66)

I suppose sex is more present than in real life a) because (as mentioned) we are reading about an unnatural concentration of fit young men, and b) because it’s all they can talk about, far from home and work and hobbies and all the other things young men divert their energies into – it’s something they all have in common: it’s a unifying subject. Also c) because sex is not only a theme which occurs in real life, but is also the subject of so many jokes, subject and punchline of an infinity of gags.

The view from the observation post was magnificent. Below lay the vast Goubelat Plain, to our right, about five miles on, were two magnificent adjoining rocky peaks that rose sheer 500 feet above the plain, Garra el Kibira and Garra el Hamada, christened ‘Queen Sheba’s tits’ (p.87)

But sometimes it’s just sex. When he’s sent to hospital for a few days with a swollen knee:

There was one magnificent nurse, Sheila Frances. She had red hair, deep blue eyes and was very pretty, but that didn’t matter! because! she had big tits! Everyone was after he and I didn’t think I stood a chance but she fancied me. I got lots of extra, like helping me get her knickers off in her tent and she eased my pain no end. (p.194)

If you can take, or even enjoy, this kind of thing, this book is for you.

Class war

Spike is very much a man of the people. He constantly refers to his family’s address in the lower class suburb of Brockley, to his ma and da and brother, identifies very strongly with ‘the lads’, and misses no opportunity to take the mickey out of the upper-class officers and their general air of bewilderment.

Officers tried to occupy us with things like ‘Do that top button up’. They were then hard put to it to think of something to do next, they settled for ‘Undo that top button’. (p.61)

The officers were grouped round a map and appeared more excited than is good for English gentlemen. (p.67)

In the dim light of the OP Chater Jack and the three officers were sipping tea. I saluted. To a man they ignored me…Gunner Woods, slaving over a hot primus, filled my mug. The officers were talking. ‘I don’t like hybrid strains,’ one was saying. ‘Too much like having a queer in the garden. Ha ha ha.’ ‘What a crowd of bloody fools,’ I thought. ‘You should have come earlier,’ whispered Woods. ‘They were on about the price of tennis shoes.’ (p.155)

If you read Milligan’s account alone you’d be amazed that the British Army ever won anything.

Types of humour

I tried to categorise aspects of Milligan’s humour in my review of the Hitler book. The commonest feature is gags, quickfire puns and comic misunderstandings. Because these are not extended sketches, don’t rely on character of clever setups, but are just bad puns, they a) are not very deep or satisfying and b) can easily become irritating. Here’s a successful little bit of repartee.

We were driven at speed to a massive French Colonial Opera House where at one time, massive French colonials sang. A sweating sergeant was waiting.
‘I’m the compere. You are the Royal Artillery Orchestra?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Where’s the rest of you?’
‘This is all there is of me. I’m considered complete by the medical officer.’
‘We had been expecting a full orchestra.’
‘We are full – we just had dinner.’ (p.36)

I spent a lot of it thinking the humour is very puerile, literally for boys, maybe 11 year-old boys would find it funny. But then you turn a page and find material radically inappropriate for an 11 year-old.

An hour later we settled in our beds listening to the lurid exploits of Driver ‘Plunger’ Bailey because he had a prick the size and shape of a sink pump. (p.35)

So the continual flow of sex references mean it’s not really appropriate for children. Is it? I first read these when I was 10 or 11, I loved the humour, can’t remember what I made of the knob jokes.

Some gags feel very stock and routine – such as describing almost any bad aspect of the war, and then tacking on a homely cockney sentiment for comic incongruity:

About 1 o’clock we arrived at the GP. Our guns were firing. What a bloody noise. What in heaven’s name did they think they were doing – it was past midnight. What would the neighbours say? (p.73)

It’s a common tactic, not only of Spike’s but of all the men around him, to make humour by taking a dangerous or exotic aspect of the war and deflating it with homely references to tea and buns or buses or family.

Somewhere a donkey was braying into the darkness. ‘Coming mother,’ said Gunner White. (p.48)

But most of it consists of comic routines arising naturally from the situation:

Wilson was a dour Scot sporting pebble glasses (only the British Army would make him a driver). I think he drove in Braille. In peacetime he’d been a shepherd. He rarely spoke, but sometimes in his sleep, he bleated. (p.132)

Or:

‘Milligan, this dog is half wild.’
‘Well, only stroke the other half, then.’ (p.139)

Or:

‘Who’s there?’ said a voice.
‘A band of Highly Trained Nymphomaniacs.’
The tent flap flew open and an unshaven face that appeared to belong to Bombardier Deans appeared. ‘Ah, you must be the one that goes around frightening little children,’ I said. (p.140)

Or:

A bath! Ten minutes later I stood naked by the thermal spring soaping myself, singing, and waving my plonker at anyone who made rude remarks. ‘With one as big as that you ought to be back home on Essential War Work.’ It was nice to have these little unsolicited testimonials. (p.164)

Or:

There was a silence. ‘I wonder what Jerry’s up to?’ said Deans. ‘He must be up to chapter 2, they’re slow readers, it’s all them big German words like Trockenbeerauslese that slows them down.’ (p.189)

Or:

A swelling had started on my knee. I said so to Lt Budden.
‘A swelling has started on my knee.’
‘It’s got to start somewhere,’ he said. (p.192)

Actually reading them out of context makes me laugh. Maybe it’s best to dip in and out of or have someone read out aloud the funniest bits.

Some facts

He is promoted from Gunner to Lance Bombardier and acquires one stripe on his arm.

On 16 April 1943, at the front, helping to direct his artillery and coming under periodic enemy fire, he turns 25 (p.178).

First mention of encountering Gunner Harry Secombe, and then namechecking Peter Sellers, serving in the RAF in faraway Ceylon (p.200).

Moments

Just occasionally, through the blizzard of gags, there are rare moments of sensibility. Some of his descriptions of the landscape peep out like shy children from a hiding place and you wonder whether this is the real Spike, buried under a) all the info from the diaries and b) avalanches of quickfire gags.

At the foot of El Kourzia, a great salt lagoon two to three miles in circumference. Around the main lagoon were dotted smaller lagoons and around the fringe, what appeared to be a pink scum. In fact it was hundreds of flamingoes. This vision, the name of Sheba, the sun, the crystal white and silver shimmer of the salt lagoon made boyhood readings of Rider Haggard come alive. It was a sight I can never forget, so engraved was it that I was able to dash it down straight into the typewriter after a gap of thirty years. (p.87)

In particular I was struck by his unexpected knowledge of flowers:

We were walking over wheatfields now flattened by war machines. It was magnificent country, spring was at hand, the wild flowers were beginning to sprout, the wheat crops were about a foot high, and lush broad beans were about to flower. Compared with the English variety, these were giants, and there were acres and acres of them around El Aroussa flat lands … Another plant, borage, was growing freely in the ditches as were little blue and ed anemones that grew among the wheat stalks. Broom was about to bud… (p.84)

Traumas

In fact, suddenly and without warning, on page 156, there is a completely candid, joke-free passage, describing him sitting in a hotel room in Madrid, describing how powerful the emotions experienced at that time still remain, eclipsing everything that came after, and how little things, a smell a snatch of jazz melody, transport him right back to the battlefield and the bases and the most intense friendships of his life. They aren’t really happy memories and yet they’re addictive, like a drug. Poor Spike.

This turns out to be the first of a new thing in these books, short sections titled ‘Traumas’, which are printed in smaller font than the main text and describe nightmares. He dreams he’s blown to pieces by a direct hit from a mortar and hears the stretcher bearer saying ‘this one’s dead’ (p.161). There’s a really grisly nightmare about being slowly crushed to death by the tracks of a Panzer tank (p.173). Another of taking a direct hit from a shell but being conscious enough to turn round and see his entrails spread out like a fan behind him (p.194).

According to this (and every other war book you read) there’s a lot of banter and humour among squaddies but Spike’s goes leagues beyond that, to border on mania and he knows it.

I went raving on, I was mad I know, under these conditions it was advisable. (p.162)

The same kind of conditions being endured by soldiers on the front line in Ukraine right now.

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Credit

‘Rommel?’ ‘Gunner Who?’ A Confrontation in the Desert by Spike Milligan was published by Michael Joseph in 1974. References are to the 1976 Penguin paperback edition.

Related reviews

• Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall (1971)
• Second World War reviews