Where Have All the Bullets Gone? Read Online Free PDF

butterfly net. No. Bronchitis catches you. So, a bronchitis had caught me. It was suffering from me very badly, I had given the poor thing a high temperature, so I had to get my bronchitis to a hospital. No. 104 General at Nocera. Bingo! You’ve won the Golden Enema! Another ward, blue jim-jams, female nurses, and mossy nets to stop them dive-bombing. That night I was delirious, but people couldn’t tell the difference.

April 13
Diary:
Feeling better. Wrote to mother giving list of my post-war underwear stock.
    I go on record that April 16 is my birthday.
“Given extra medicine as a treat.”
    Now dear reader, mystery.

April 21
Diary:
“Bert says his leg is getting better.”
    Now I don’t remember Bert or his leg. So, if nothing else, the reader will know that on April 21 1944, Bert’s leg is getting better. By now I’d say it was totally better and he’s snuffed it.
    My bronchitis is better and I can take it back to camp.

Necrophiles
    O utside our camp was the walled cemetery. Alas! the grounds are overgrown with wartime neglect or is it grass? Latins lavish more attention and emotion on their dead than we do. Every headstone has a photograph of the departed. What was ghoulishly interesting were the wall graves, immured with a glass panel to show the departed. One was stunningly macabre: the body of a girl of eighteen buried in 1879 in her bridal gown. The hair was red and had grown after death, as had her fingernails, filling the space like Indian candy floss. The headstones abound with grisly warnings: “As I am now, so will you be.” Why does the church allow these nasty after-death threats? Why not go the whole hog?
EARLY MORNING VATICAN RADIO
HIGH PRIEST:
Hi ya, this is Vatican Radio PIP PIP PIP. Yes, it’s nine thirty-one, another moment nearer your death, Byeeeeeeee.
    Nasty things are happening — some of the loonies are digging up the graves, or breaking the glass and knocking off the rings. (In the case of bankruptcy break glass?) Jock Rogers is horrified. “Och, this’ll get us a terrible name.” Terrible name? How about Tom Crabs or Doris Herpes? Dick Scratcher?
    Private Andrews is more suspicious. “They’re fuckin’ the stiffs.” Surely not. “Aye, they’re not after the jewellery, they’re after a fuck.” It wasn’t so, but we didn’t want to spoil Andrews’ fun. He was an argumentative bugger, especially on sport. He was a fitba’ freak and when he found I liked rugby, gave me hell.
    “It’s fer bleedin’ snobs Jamie, and that ball, like a bloody duck’s egg, no wonder you ha’ to carry the bloody thing.”
     
    I still wasn’t a well person. In May I had three bad depressions. I had heard via the grapevine that some of my mates from 19 Battery were having leave at Amalfi, just an hour up the road. I asked ‘Trickcyclist’ if I could go and see them, but he said no, we were not to leave the confines of Baiano. It was nonsense. Now I realize I could have gone and taken the quinciquonces. Depressed by the decision, I went straight out, got smashed, came back late, got into the Nissen hut, bolted the door, went on drinking and shouted abuse. Finally I cut my face with a razor blade then fell asleep, all done for effect, a cri de coeur. They broke down the door and took me to the sick bay. When I awoke, Private Shepherd gave me some pills that sent me off again. His exact words were: “Take these yer daft bugger.” However a letter written at the time showed me to be quite lucid.
     
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    ED: Transcribed faithfully including error. Added some spaces to improve reflowability.
    MY DEAR DAD,
     
    SORRY TO HAVE DELAYED IN ANWERING YOUR LAST LETTER, BUT WORK IN THIS OFFICE IS HANDS HIGH. I NEARLY DROPPED DOWN WITH SHOCK WHEN YOU TOLD ME THAT DES WAS NOW IN THE ULSTER RIFLES, UO TO THEN I HAD NO IDEA HE AS EVEN ON THE VERGE OF JOINING THE ARME…BUT INFANTRY, THATS NO JOKE, BELIVE ME, IN THIS THEATERE THE INFANTRY GET ALL THE MUCK, KNOWING DESMONDS PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER AS I DO