Goodbye Soldier (War Biography Vol. 6)

Originally Spike Milligan intended his war memoirs to be a trilogy, but they eventually stretched to six volumes. This one is less funny than the earlier volumes (monty, His Part in my Victory is the funniest), but still has plenty of humour. Spike is travelling round Italy with a concert party and meets the exquisite Maria Antoinetta Fontana (Toni) and falls madly in love. Most of the book is about their romance, culminating in a magical holiday on Capri. Their romance is so hot I find myself wishing when I read it that they had got married, but they didn't. Maybe it was better like that, I doubt if Spike was an easy man to live with, and probably Toni would not have much cared for postwar England, how drab it would have seemed after Italy. He sent her flowers every year for the rest of his life, probably it was just as well they left it like that, a perfect italian romance.

His absolutely last (for the time being) war diary. Mostly concerns his relationship with Toni, an Italian ballerina, whom he met whilst a member of a travelling show in Europe. What happens to the relationship after he returns to England? We don't get told in this (last) war diary. A sad/happy/funny/touching account of part of Spike's life in 1946

This is another episode in Spike Milligan's wonderfully sad, poignant and hilarious series of war diaries. It's impossible to read any of these books (Hitler/Rommel/Mussolini/etc) without laughing out loud. And yet they are also the most honest, forthright and real war diaries I have ever read. In Goodbye Soldier, Spike is finally discharged and has to sort out what he is going to do with his life after six years in the army. It's a bumpy road, full of disappointments and setbacks, but it ends with the formation of the Goons with Peter Sellars, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine. More please,Spike!