"Rommel?" "Gunner Who?"

Satire by Spike Milligan

Blurb

Spike Milligan's second volume of war autobiography, "Rommel?" "Gunner Who?": A Confrontation in the Desert, was published in 1974, with Jack Hobbs credited as an editor. This book spans events from January to May 1943, during Operation Torch, the Allied liberation of Africa in World War II.
As before, the book is in an unusual format freely mixing multimedia formats, with narrative anecdotes, contemporaneous photography, ridiculously non-contemporaneous steel engravings and illustrations, excerpts from actual diaries, actual letters, and rough sketches, along with absurd memoranda from Nazi officials. A map is included.
In a later volume, Milligan wrote, "I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened". In retrospect, the reader is left in some doubt – for the Prologue to this volume reads:
"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry.
Thucydides. Peloponnesian War.
I've just jazzed mine up a little.
Milligan. World War II."

First Published

1974

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