Free Goodbye Soldier by Spike Milligan

do?” I told her I’d go for a walk and see what happened.
    I’m starting to burn so I plunge into the waters of the beckoning Adriatic. Mulgrew is standing waist-deep. “Are there any sharks in the Adriatic?” I assure him that there are sharks in all warm waters. “Oh Christ,” he says.
    Greta Weingarten, our German girl, starts to swim out. I follow her. We go about a fifth of a mile; she turns and says, “You are gute swimmer.” How a German girl got into our show was a mystery.
A FORCED LABOUR CAMP IN RUSSIA.
HITLER IS SHOVELLING SALT AND SHIT.
HITLER:
It is not ein mystery! She is there as my personal representative of the Third Reich!!!
    She always radiated a sense of aloofness. I suppose after the macho attitude of wartime Germany she found this collection of musicians and poofs a letdown, except that – ha! ha! – she was going around with our chief poof. All very strange: who did what to whom and how? We race each other back to the shore, I just beat her.
    Bill Hall greets me. “You put the shits up Johnny, telling him there were sharks here.”
    Toni asks me, “What is the shits up?” I roll over laughing, hearing this innocent voice. “What is the shits up?” she says again. I explain, you know in French, merde? She does, “So, it is rude?”
    “Yes.”
    The afternoon is one of running up and down the beach and splashing in the shallows, then lazing in the sun. At four o’clock we open our packed lunches, sit in the sun and masitcate our sandwiches, as eaten by the Earl of Sandwich. But who invented eating? Was it Tom Eating? What a breakthrough. Until then people kept dying of starvation. Then, Tom Eating discovered food! At first, the superstitious said, “Nay, eating food is the devil’s work.” Many eaters died for their beliefs, but in the end food won through and Tom Eating was beatified and became St Eating, Patron Saint of Food. So ended a lovely day out.
    That night just after the show finished, BOOM! a bomb explodes near the theatre. We all rush out, some of us still in costume. A crowd has gathered, there are angry shouts, they suspect Yugoslavian extremists. Toni says to me, “Did that give you shits up?” She knows it’s rude and laughs. It’s not as exciting as it should be. There’s no blood, no dismembered bodies. An Italian partisan, smothered in bullets and a machine pistol, stands on one of the bomb-shattered tables and with veins standing out like whipcords makes an impassioned speech. He says no Yugoslav is going to take Trieste as long as he has breath in his body. The table collapses and he is pitched, still shouting, into the crowd. The American police arrive, the Italian police arrive and, true to form, last are the British police. They start to ask questions and are highly suspicious of all of us in costume. Lieutenant Priest explains that we are travelling mummers and all is well. For all his patriotic utterances the partisan is taken into custody and is driven away in a jeep still declaiming that Trieste is Italian.
    It had been quite a day, but there was still the night and, with it, Bill Hall’s nocturnal desires. Somewhere in Trieste some old boiler of a woman will get his attention. “Listen everybody,” says Lieutenant Priest. “Tomorrow is a day off, the Charabong is going to Grado at ten for swimming.” We give him a cheer. This night Toni says I can come into her bedroom. Ha, ha. We start snogging on the bed. So far our affair has been quite innocent, but this time it starts to get serious. She pushes my fumbling hands away. “You give me the shits,” she says and it doubles me up with laughter. But we were getting serious – all those little biological bugs inside us egging us on! Helppp! I’m on course to severely seduce Miss Fontana!
GRADO
    N ext day, we are all in the Charabong looking forward to the day at Grado. We are singing, “Why Are We Waiting?”. In this instance, it’s Bill Hall. He finally appears blinking in the unaccustomed