Associated Press photo library"; Milligan recalled his mother being "often tense and angry... a domestic tyrant" due to having to manage on "next to no income". After moving to Brockley, south east London from the age of 12 in 1931, Milligan attended Brownhill Road School (later to be renamed Catford Boys School) and St Saviours School, Lewisham High Road. Disliking his first name Terry, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg. After leaving school, he worked as a clerk in the Woolwich Arsenal, played the cornet and discovered jazz. He also joined the Young Communist League to demonstrate his hatred of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, who were gaining support near his home in South London. Second World War During most of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Milligan performed as an amateur jazz vocalist, guitarist, and trumpeter before, during and after being called up for military service joining the Royal Artillery, in the fight against Nazi Germany, but even then he wrote and performed comedy sketches as part of concerts to entertain troops. After his call-up, but before being sent abroad, he and fellow musician Harry Edgington (1919–1993) (whose nickname 'Edge-ying-Tong', inspired one of Milligan's most memorable musical creations, the "Ying Tong Song") would compose surreal stories, filled with puns and skewed logic, as a way of staving off the boredom of life in barracks. A biographer describes his early dance band work: "He managed to croon like Bing Crosby and win a competition: he also played drums, guitar and trumpet, in which he was entirely self taught". Milligan acquired a double bass, on which he took lessons and would strum in jazz sessions. He had perfect pitch. During the Second World War, Milligan served as a signaller in D Battery (later 19 Battery), 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, as Gunner Milligan, 954024. The unit was equipped with the obsolete First World War era BL 9.2-inch howitzer and based in Bexhill on the south coast of England. Milligan describes training with these guns in part two of Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, claiming that, during training, gun crews resorted to shouting "bang" in unison as they had no shells with which to practise. The unit was later re-equipped with the BL 7.2-inch howitzer and saw action as part of the First Army in the