Alan Watkins, Brief Lives (Auberon Waugh)

I think I may have mentioned Brief Lives by Alan Watkins before.

There’s an hilarious passage on Auberon Waugh that I must share with you.

“He did his national service as a subaltern in the Royal Horse Guards and was sent to Cyprus. One day he noticed and impediment in the elevation of the Browning machine gun in his armoured car, and resolved to investigate it. He moved to the front of the gun, seized it and wiggled it up and down, whereupon it started to fire bullets into him. He survived, but lost a lung, his spleen, several ribs and a finger. As he was lying on the ground, waiting for the ambulance, he said to his platoon sergeant, a parachutist from Bristol called Chudleigh: ‘kiss me, Chudleigh.’ Chudleigh, however, did not spot the reference, and afterwards treated Waugh with suspicion and reserve…..It was believed by some that he had been fired on by his own troops – similar stories were told about his father – and also that he had lost a testicle, but both these tails were convincingly denied by Waugh”

I’m still laughing, days after reading that passage.