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BY ROGER SMITH

Extracts from the book
:
· Flies and worse in the Western Desert
· A peculiar addiction to Irish lyrics
· Burying the dead — Tebaga Gap
· British Army at a minefield near Sfax, Tunisia
· The countryside near Sousse, Tunisia
· The Padre's tools of trade
· A minefield near Takrouna, Tunisia
· Kelly in Cairo
· Housekeeping in a two-man bivvy in the rain — Sangro, Italy
· Falling asleep on duty — Sangro
· Kelly dies at the Sangro River
· Civilians caught in the frontline — Castel Frantano, Italy
· Getting sadness off your chest
· Giant drunken zooming fireflies — Alife, Italy
· Christmas 1943 — back from the front
· Maori Battalion, Trocchio, Italy
· Fear, and fear of fear — Cassino, Italy
· A break from Cassino
· All in a day’s work in the Cassino rubble
· There for your mate at the finish — Terelle, Italy

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KELLY IN CAIRO

Then Kelly turned up again. I had forgotten about him and thought that he must have gone home, but not Kelly. He fled to Cairo the day before the furlough draft left, and for the past month he’d been living with a Greek girl in a house boat on the Nile. He had run out of money, had tried to rob a bar, been caught by the provosts after a two-hour running fight, and was now hauled before the CO to face a charge of violence and being AWOL.

Hank and I were called for escort duty when he went up for sentence, and we went through the usual routine of:

“Left turn!”

“Right turn!”

“Left turn!”

“As you were!”

“Left turn!”

“Quick march! Left, right, left, right!”

“Halt! ”

“Right turn!”

Kelly collected twenty-one days in the field punishment centre, and I just had time to whisper as we went left, right, left righting out again:
“Was she worth it, you sinner?”

“Beauty, boy, beauty,” Kelly replied with a horribly reminiscent leer of lust.

 

 

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Copyright © Roger Smith, 2000