Peace Work by Spike Milligan Page A

job like that?” I said.
    “Anyone on the farm. They do it when they are young.”
    “Why do you have to be young to chop ‘em off?” I said.
    “Tsu, the bullocks, Milligan, the bullocks must be young.”
    “Cor, what a job!” said Hall. “I can see his card now: Jim Dungley, knackers neatly nipped. Two pounds a hundred.”
    “Yes,” mused Mulgrew, “but I wonder what he put in the shop window.”
    The entire cast are now deep into sandwich munching, and it’s amazing how bovine they look. John Angove, our character actor and vegetarian, is trying to swop his sandwiches. “Anyone swop beef for cheese and tomato?” he shouts out. In those distant days a vegetarian was looked on like a freak – some of the cast are bleating and mooing at him.
    “Don’t worry, there’s a lovely field of grass just waiting for you.”
    Poor Angove, he specialized in make-up. He would spend up to two hours putting his old man make-up on. Alas, he didn’t look a day older.
    Mulgrew has a reddish stain around his lips. He appears to be drinking from a brown paper bag, the swine has got a bottle in there!! What’s the idea? He tells us that Harry Lauder always drank from a bottle in a paper bag, it gave him an air of respectability.
    “They’re all bloody strange in Glasgow,” says Hall. “As for ‘Arry Lauder, he was a mean bugger. If he was a ghost, he’d be too mean to give you a fright.”
    “He’s still top of the bill, mate,” says Mulgrew.
    Hall disagrees. “I think he’s bloody awful.”
    “Well,” says Mulgrew, “I saw him at the Glasgow Empire in Highland Follies . He was great.”
    “The best thing I’ve seen him in was Woolworth’s,” concluded Hall.
    Bornheim asks Mulgrew for a swig of wine. Before giving him it, Mulgrew says, “You haven’t any disease of the mouth, have you?” Bornheim assures him he hasn’t. “Well,” said Mulgrew, “I have .”
    Toni has finished her birdlike eating. She waves a handkerchief near her face. “ Che stufa ,” she says. “Oh Terr-ee, it so warm.”
    A lorryload of soldiers drives past. At the sight of our females they whistle and wolfhowl and make certain signs.
    “Oh no,” we all groan as Luigi the driver waves his arms in the air.
    “ Una puntura ,” he says. He, who has holy pictures pinned to his dashboard and a rosary affixed to the steering wheel, has a puncture.
    “He must be praying to the wrong saints,” said Lieutenant Priest.
    We all lend a hand. Luigi is pumping the jack while, in time, the joker Bill Hall plays sea shanties. We manhandle the wheel into place, all the while singing along with Hall, ‘What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor’.
    “ Tutto bene ,” says Luigi as he screws the last nut into place.
    “All aboard for turbulent Trieste,” calls Lieutenant Priest. We all troop into the Charabong with Mulgrew, Hall and Bornheim making mooing and bleating sounds.
    “You’ve all been out here too long,” says Priest.
    The journey is starting to drag. It’s hot and dusty. “Oh roll on demob,” says Bornheim. “Roll on Civvy Street.” Through the afternoon there’s considerable traffic of military vehicles, American and British, the American lorries ignoring the speed limit. They sport an upright broom tied to their vehicles.
    “Wots that mean?” says Hall.
    I explain it means they have swept all the opposition away. We pass a sign TRIESTE 20 CHILOMETRI. The Italian elections are coming up and the walls are daubed with signs – Partito Communisto or Christian Democrats.
    “Won’t it be a bugger if the Commies get in,” said Hall.
    “What do you mean?” says Mulgrew.
    “Well, after us fighting all the way up Italy – it would have been in vain, wouldn’t it? It’s like Poland: we went to bloody war for them and now the bloody Russians have got it.”
    Toni has fallen asleep on my shoulder and my arm now has pins and needles. I try clenching and unclenching the fist, but she wakes up with a start. “Where are