Friday, February 24, 2006

Lt.Whitfield's directing debut


Photo shows: Ron in rather dis-shevelled KDs in Rome

The campaign in Sicily had been sucessfully concluded and we were waiting for our next move, the invasion of Italy.

Someone at Regimental level had decided that the Batteries should put on their own concert parties to 'entertain the troops' and young Lt.Whitfield had drawn the short straw, he was now 84 Battery Entertainments Officer.

In a moment of madness I had volunteered to play on a battered 'joanna' and other fools had likewise offered to sing, tell jokes or tell monologues but all this was not enough for Lt.Whitfield who obviously considered that this was his moment for show business glory.

“What we are going to do” he proudly told us ('us' being his not over-enthusiastic band of volunteers and pressed men) “is to finish the first half of the show with every one on stage singing “Come landlord fill the flowing bowl until it doth run over”.

“The clever part” he confidently continued “is that whilst this is all going on, we will have other chaps coming down the aisles dishing out mugs of vino, which I will organise”.

Came the night, the show went like a dream and we duly sang ‘Come landlord fill the flowing bowl’ as though we meant it.

Bang on cue, the mugs of vino were brought down the aisles to rapturous applause.

One slight hitch… the vino was in such quantities that we never got to start the second half of the show but dear Lt.Whitfield has gone down into Army folk lore history,mine anyway!

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