Memoires 01 (1971) - Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall Read online

  “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

  The 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 2nd, 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.

  ≡ Assistant Instructor.

  Signallers Devine and White, who would do anything for a break, set off. In the haste to defend the Sceptered Isle, the South Coast was a mass of hurriedly-laid, unlabelled telephone lines, along walls, down drains, up men’s trouser legs, everywhere!

  After thirty military minutes, the O.P. telephone buzzed. “Ah!” said Dawson hopefully, “O.P. here.”

  “We haven’t found the break yet.”

  “Right. Keep trying.”

  The fog was now settling inland. Toy brass had finished the contents of their thermos flasks and withdrawn to the shelter of a deserted fisherman’s cottage. All was silent save the sound of frozen gunners singing the International. Every ten minutes for two hours, Signaller Devine phoned and gleefully reported, “line still broken, Sarge”. The fog was very dense, as were Signallers Devine and White, who were now groping their way through Sussex in Braille. C.O.’s patience being exhausted, a runner was sent to the gun position. Off went Gunner Balfour, the Battery champion athletes foot. Another hour. He was lost. In despair Sergeant Dawson bicycled to the police station, telephoned the Gun Position and told them “Fire the Bloody Thing!” A distant ‘BOOM’. At the O.P. we heard the whistle as the rare projectile passed overhead into the Channel, a pause, a splash, then silence…it was a dud. How could the Third Reich stand up to this punishment! Next day at low tide we were sent out to look for traces of the lost projectile; we didn’t, but it was a nice day for that sort of thing.

  Our very own 9 2 gun howitzer

  Left to right: Gunners Edgington, Milligan, White and Devine, at low tide on the beach at Galley Hill O.P., Bexhill, the day after the famous dud shell was fired, looking for traces of the lost projectile

  Gunner Milligan at the mighty Spandau

  LIFE IN BEXHILL 1940-41

  In Bexhill life carried on. We went on route marches which became pleasant country walks. A favourite marching song was ‘Come inside’—so:

  Verse:

  Outside a lunatic asylum one day

  A Gunner was picking up stones;

  Up popped a lunatic and said to him,

  Good Morning Gunner Jones,

  How much a week do you get for doing that?

  Fifteen bob, I cried.

  He looked at me

  With a look of glee

  And this is what he cried,

  Chorus:

  Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside,

  I thought you had a bit more sense,

  Working for the Army, take my tip

  Act a bit balmy and become a lunatic;

  You get your four meals regular

  and two new suits beside,

  Wot? fifteen bob a week,

  A wife and kids to keep, Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside.

  No matter what season, the Sussex countryside was always a pleasure. But the summer of 1941 was a delight. The late lambs on springheel legs danced their happiness. Hot, immobile cows chewed sweet cud under the leaf-choked limbs of June oaks that were young 500 years past. The musk of bramble and blackberry hedges, with purple-black fruit offering themselves to passing hands, poppies red, red, red, tracking the sun with open-throated petals, birds bickering aloft, bibulous to the sun. White fleecy clouds passing high, changing shapes as if uncertain of what they were. To break for a smoke, to lie in that beckoning grass and watch cabbage white butterflies dancing on the wind. Everywhere was saying bethankit. It was hop picking time. In 1941 the pickers were real cockneys who, to the consternation of the A.R.P. Wardens, lit bonfires at night and sang roistering songs under the stars. “Right, fags out, fall in!” of course, I almost forgot, the war! but people were saying it would all be over by Christmas. Good! that was in twelve weeks’ time! I started to read the ‘Situations Vacant’ in the Daily Telegraph, and prematurely advertised, “Gunner 954024, retired house-trained war hero, unexpectedly vacant. Can pull a piece of string and shout bang with confidence.”

  Part III

  1940 HOW WE MADE MUSIC DESPITE

  I took my trumpet to war. I thought I’d earn spare cash by playing Fall In, Charge, Retreat, Lights Out, etc. I put a printed card on the Battery Notice Board, showing my scale of charges:

  Fall In 1/6

  Fall out 1/-

  Charge 1/9

  Halt £648

  Retreat (Pianissimo) 4/-

  Retreat (Fortissimo) 10/-

  Lights Out 3/-

  Lights Out played in private 4/-

  While waiting for these commissions I’d lie on my palliasse and play tunes like, ‘Body and Soul’, ‘Can’t Get Started’, ‘Stardust’. It was with mixed feeling that I played something as exotic as ‘You go to my Head’ watching some hairy gunner cutting his toe-nails. Of course I soon contacted the Jazz addicts. I was introduced to six-foot-two dreamy-eyed Gunner Harry Edgington. A Londoner, he was an extraordinary man, with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. Harry played the piano. Self taught. He delighted me with some tunes he had composed. He couldn’t read music, and favoured two keys, F sharp and C sharp! both keys the terror of the Jazz man: however, over the months I’d husk tunes with him in the N.A.A.F.I. I taught him the names of various chords and he was soon playing in keys that made life easier for me. He was game for a ‘Jam’ any time. And of course, start to hum any tune and Harry would be in with the harmony, and spot on. It helped life a lot to have him around. One day, with nothing but money in mind, I suggested to Harry we try and form a band. Harry grinned and looked disbelieving. “Just the two of us?”

  “We could sit far a
part,” I said.

  A stroke of luck. A driver, Alf Fildes, was posted to us with suspected rabies and he played the guitar! All we needed was a drummer. We advertised in Part Two Orders. “Wanted. House Trained Drummer. Academic Training advantage, but not essential. Apply The Gunners Milligan and Edgington. No coloureds but men with names like Duke Ellington given preference.” No one came forward. We were stuck, worse still we were stuck in the Army. But! Milligan had the eye of an eagle, the ear of a dog, and the brain of a newt, (we’ve all got to eat). One meal time, as the dining hall rang to the grinding of teeth on gritty cabbages, came the sound of a rhythmic beat; it was a humble gunner hammering on a piece of Lease Lend bacon, trying to straighten it out for the kill. This was Driver Douglas Kidgell. Would he like to be our drummer? Yes. Good. Now, where to get the drums. Gunner Nick Carter said there was a ‘certain’ drum kit lying fallow under the stage of Old Town Church Hall. Captain Martin, a sort of commissioned Ned Kelly, suggested we ‘requisition’ the ‘certain’ drum kit to prevent it falling into German hands. This sort of patriotism goes deep. With Germany poised to strike we couldn’t waste time. We took the drums, and camouflaged them by painting on the Artillery Crest. Kidgell soon got the hang of the drums, and lo! we were a quartet!

  After a month’s practice, Captain Martin asked could we play for a dance. I told him we had a very limited repertoire, he said: “So have I, we’ll hold the dance this Saturday.” GAD’ this was the big time! Saturday, The Old Town Church Hall, Bexhill! who knows next week, Broadway! In entertainment starved Bexhill, the dance was a sell-out. The old corrugated iron Hall was packed to suffocation; there were old women. kids, officers, gunners, various wives, very much a village dance affair.

  After twenty minutes we had exhausted our repertoire, so we started again. I suppose playing ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ forty times must be some kind of a record. The bar did roaring business the barman being none other than the Reverend Clegg, Regimental Vicar. We played well on into the night. About two o’clock Captain Martin called a halt. They all stood to attention, we played ‘God Save the King’. Now for the rewards. To pay us, Captain Martin led us into the Churchyard in pitch darkness. There he gave us a ‘ten shilling note.