Product Description

Britannia rules the waves TA-RA, but on occasions she waives the rules and Spike is all set to liberate-gasp-Italy. In this fourth volume of war memoirs, Lance-Bombardier Milligan (Spike actually) continues his notorious sage of World War II - from the long remembered outbreak of crabs in monkey to the unfortunate ack-acking of and American killyhawk. Dio mio, is war is a game of cards, someone was cheating.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11994 in Books
• Published on: 1986-10-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Spike Milligan was born at Ahmednagar in India in 1918. He received his first education in a tent in the Hyderabad Sindh desert and graduated from there, through a series of Roman Catholic schools in India and England, to the Lewisham Polytechnic. He then plunged into the world of Show Business, seduced by his first stage appearance, at the age of eight, in the nativity play of his Poona convent school. He began his career as a band musician, but has since become famous as a humorous scriptwriter and actor in both films and broadcasting. Spike received an honorary CBE in 1992.

Customer Reviews

World War 2 as it should be told (with added funny bits).
In this book (along with all the others in this 'trilogy' of war memoirs) Spike tells us his war story. I am not old enough to remember the war but both my Grandparents were and I often wondered what it was really like. I read quite a lot and have read quite a few war memoirs but, when I found out that Spike Milligan had published his, I had to read them at once. I found that through Spikes writing I was able to get a real idea of what the war was actually like. Anyone that likes Spikes sense of humour and fun will not be dissapointed with this book. Being Spike, there are times when his stories are outrageously, laugh out loud funny. But there are also times when the harsh realities of war interfere with those times of laughter, and this makes Spikes memoirs all the more poignient. This book will take you from laughter to solemn contemplation from one sentence to the next. At one point I found myself wishing I was there, sharing in the laughter, the fun and yes, even the music. At others I could only thank God that I mised any sort of experience like that. It's that sort of book.

War is Madness! (Here's the proof).
"Milligan, you should be dismissed from the Army on the grounds of madness". "That's how I got in, sir".
This book begins with the 56th crossing from Tunis to Italy, wondering what sort of landing awaits them on the beaches at Salerno. Ah, but it's not Jerry that awaits Milligan; it's a sandfly that has his number on it! After disembarking, the gunners have to keep moving their heavy artillery ever forward to keep up with the PBI (poor bloody infantry) and conditions deteriorate for them to the point that they resemble a collection of soggy, mud-caked scarecrows. But are they downhearted... well, yes, actually. Just as it can't get any worse for Spike the sandfly fever hits him and he's sent back to hospital, surrounded by the sick and dying. Although he makes a recovery, and his unit finally sends someone to pick him up (only after he threatens to desert, mind), his health is obviously not 100% as he keeps getting spurts of unaccountable illness. Obvious, that is, to all except Major 'jumbo' Jenkins, the battery's miltary pedant and slave driver. The good Major sees to it that Spike gets his share of hairy moments until, having a mortar lobbed far too close to him for his continued welfare, Spike finally succumbs to the combination of bad health and stress and goes 'bomb-happy'. The Major thinks he just needs further exposure to danger to get him over it but, surprisingly, this does not work. Eventually, unable to function, Spike has to be sent back to hospital for a second time.
It's while convalescing yet again, and with Major Jenkins refusing to forgive and forget and take him back, that Spike begins his very first tentative steps toward the spotlight which is drawing him ever closer to his showbiz future. Finding some worthwhile and fulfilling work, generally lackying for others with the odd spot of entertaining thrown in, he's eventually talent-spotted (in more ways than one, as it turns out) by an entertainments Major. He goes up in the world of service entertainment and, just as victory is won in Italy, the 'nice' Major presents him with a parting surprise - two stripes!
All the way Spike meets with the usual variety of both comical and pathetic characters and situations, witnesses the eruption of Vesuvius, explores Pompeii's erotic past, fends off Iti prostitutes ("mea no jig-a-jig; mea Roman Catolica") and holidays on the isle of Capri (doing his best to avoid Gracy Fields who is living there and singing to every soldier in sight).

Possibly the best of Milligan's war memoirs
Most people will only know Spike Milligan for his offbeat TV series, silly poems, and the Goon Show, but Spike was in my opinion a superb writer with a gift for transporting the reader effortlessly to the time and place he's writing about. His descriptions of military/wartime life are second to none. Farce, Danger, cameraderie, friendship, loss, suffering, the absurdity of war, the compassion of some people and the callousness of others, it's all here. If I had to take only one set of books with me to a desert island then it would be Spike Milligan's war memoirs - and "Mussolini" is possibly the best of them all.