There have been many accounts of World War II, but this 1971 memoir by Spike Milligan—a comedy institution in his native Britain—surely ranks among the funniest. Adapted into a BAFTA-nominated film two years later, this first volume of his epic life story spans from the outbreak of war in 1939 ("It must have been something we said") through his attempts to avoid enlistment ("Time for my appendicitis, I thought") and from his gunner training in Bexhill ("There was one drawback. No ammunition") to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ("I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway").