Found this gem the other day, I had heard about it but never had the chance to read it.
Rommel? Gunner Who? was written by Spike Milligan with Jack Hobbs.
This book is really funny and also very honest at times. It is about Spike Milligan’s time as a gunner in North Africa during World War II. Rommel? Gunner Who? is not really about the war as a campaign or a series of battles; it is about what war feels like. It shows confusion, fear, boredom, and exhaustion. It is about the everyday things that happen during war—the shouting, the sand that gets everywhere, the shellfire, and the endless waiting. Milligan does not make war look exciting or heroic. Instead, he shows the truth of it, which is often ridiculous, ugly, and deeply sad. The story is told entirely from ground level, where war is not a plan or a strategy but something you hear, see, and feel moment by moment.
The book is really about showing that many of the stories people tell about war are not true. It is the opposite of the big-picture view. Figures like Rommel, the “Desert Fox,” loom large in official histories and officers’ briefings, but to the gunners, Rommel is just a name they hear when they are being shelled. Milligan shows what it is like to be small, powerless, and largely unaware of what is going on, used as part of something far bigger without ever understanding it. The book makes it clear that ordinary soldiers often do not know where they fit into the war at all.
Milligan’s comedy is exactly what you would expect, but it is also more important than it first appears. It runs through the entire book. His humour shows how soldiers kept themselves mentally intact. He jokes about pointless orders, petty rules, incompetent leaders, and the gap between what the military claims to be doing and what actually happens. His writing can be strange and disjointed at times, sometimes stopping abruptly, which mirrors the mental state of men who are completely worn out. The comedy and the fact that people are dying exist side by side throughout the book.
What really matters is that combat is never made to sound exciting or impressive. When fighting starts, it is terrifying and confusing. People are so frightened that they freeze or wander around not knowing what to do. Milligan’s descriptions of explosions, wounds, and fear are powerful because he does not try to make them dramatic or noble. He simply tells the truth. There are no heroes, just people who are shocked, hurt, lost, or missing. Combat comes across as chaos, fear, and humiliation, and his descriptions of sound, pain, and confusion feel painfully honest.
One of the things that makes the memoir so effective is that Milligan clearly cares about people. He is very blunt about officers and the military system, but at the same time he writes with real affection for the men he served with—gunners, drivers, cooks, runners. These were ordinary people who went through terrible experiences together and still found ways to laugh. Milligan never turns them into stock characters from a war story. They matter because they are ordinary.
This book is important for many reasons. It is about history, but it is also about the human mind. At the time Milligan was writing, people did not openly talk about what we now call combat stress. He writes about the psychological effects of soldiering with remarkable honesty. If you know what later happened to Milligan and others like him, parts of the book read very differently. The humour does not feel like a way of avoiding reality; it feels like a warning signal that something is wrong. The jokes act as a survival mechanism, a way to stop everything from becoming unbearable.
Rommel? Gunner Who? is a special book because it tells the truth about war without dressing it up. Milligan does not try to make war meaningful or glorious. He simply shows it as it was lived. Some readers may not like it because it does not focus on maps, tactics, or detailed battle plans. But for anyone who wants to understand what it was actually like to be there, this book is invaluable.
It will be most appreciated by readers who enjoy sharp comedy, personal storytelling rather than formal history, and writing that captures anxiety, boredom, and absurdity as much as danger. Rather than celebrating war, Milligan shows how soldiers endured it, laughed at it, and were permanently affected by it. In doing so, he wrote not just a comedy memoir, but one of the most honest and moving personal accounts of the Second World War.
If you haven’t already gathered I “really like” this one!
