Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall Read Online Free PDF Page B

gassed.”
    “Thank God! I couldn’t stand this all again.”
    “Come on,” urged Dawson, “don’t fuck about.” My Mickey Mouse watch↓ said 3.30 a.m.! Christ!
≡ I won this by entering a colouring contest in Mickey Mouse Weekly! I put my age down as eleven and won a prize.
    We were trooped into the Naffi Hut, faceless in gas masks, cocooned in gas capes, the epitome of Military Efficiency. Nobody knew who was who. What must have been the B.S.M. held up the nominal roll board and was calling the names out when he realised he couldn’t be heard. He raised the gas mask and started to re-call the roll: we answered but likewise, in turn, we couldn’t lie heard. Captain Martin, who’d had enough, took off his mask: “All take your masks off or we’ll be here all bloody night.”
    The roll was called.
    “Right! gas masks on again!”
    We all stood like dummies. We could hear no planes. Several minutes passed. B.S.M. slipped his mask up: “Stand at Ease.” We stood at ease. Several more minutes passed. Leather Suitcase arrived on the scene looking flushed and pissed with his pyjamas showing out of the bottoms of his trousers. For his benefit B.S.M. called the roll again. There we stood. This was our first air-raid warning. It became evident that, having roused us, nobody quite knew what to do with us. Sirens were going the length of the South Coast. “It’s all Bexhill’s bloody fault,” said Chalky White. Eventually the eye-pieces on Suitcase’s gas mask steamed up: he removed it and looked at his watch. “Well, I think that’s enough,” he said. “Parade dismiss Sarn’t-Major,” and we all trooped off to bed.
Sergeant Harris’s method of smuggling tinned food through the British Lines at Bexhill

APPLICATION FOR RAF PILOT
    A bout now, of course, the heroes of the war were the R.A.F. Pilots. It made you green with envy on leave. All the beautiful birds went out with pilots. I couldn’t stand it any more. I volunteered for the Air Force. I had to be interviewed by Leather Suitcase.
    “I hear you want a transfer, Milligan.”
    “Yes sir, I want to join the R.A.F.”
    “Ah yes, those are the ones that fly.”
    “Yes sir, they go up whereas we just go along.”
    “Have you ever flown before?”
    “No sir, but I’ve been upstairs on a bus on my own.”
    “No, what I said was, have you ever flown before. I didn’t say anything about buses.”
    “No sir, I have never flown before.”
    “Your father has written to me about it, and I will recommend you for a transfer.”
     
    In February 1941 I was called for an interview to Kingsway House. I waited in a room with about forty other hopefuls. After an hour I was called before a man who appeared to be wearing a pair of hairy outstretched wings under his nose.
    “.I see you want to join the R.A.F.”
    “Yes, sir, I have the character and temperament that is admirably suited to that arm.”
    “What would you like to be.”
    “A pilot, sir.”
    “Want to go out with pretty girls, eh?”
    After a stringent Physical Examination they told me. “Sorry, your eyesight isn’t up to what we need for a pilot; however, we have a number of vacancies for rear gunners.”
    “No sir, I don’t want to be at the back, I want to drive.”
    “I’m sorry lad, that’s all we can offer you.”
Letter from my major to my father
     
    I stood up, saluted smartly and exited. As I walked down the corridor to the street, I saw what was possibly the ugliest W.A.A.F. I had ever seen. “Hello cheeky,” she said as I passed her. Perhaps they were right, perhaps I had got bad eyesight. I caught an evening train back to Bexhill, and arrived to be informed by Edgington that he had read in the Melody Maker that Harry Parry, of the BBC Radio Rhythm Club, was holding auditions to find the best unknown jazz musicians—the winners were to make a recording for. broadcasting on the BBC. We wrote off to Harry Parry, c/o BBC, London. We received a reply saying could we come down on