大象传媒

In their off-duty moments, the Germans in the training ground beside our camp were very intrigued with British inventiveness, when they witnessed the home- made stoves on which a cup of tea was made with very quickly boiled water. The stove itself was constructed with tin, welded together by bending the sides sharply over and presumably by hammering a nail down the edges to join each section together. In order to make a fan, a belt of string must have been used. The bowl itself must have been smuggled in from without. As soon as each man had successfully boiled his water, he would shout out "any embers"
whereupon, the red hot embers would be quickly taken over by the first bidder.
One day, a very distressing accident occurred,when
one of our number foolishly placed an unopened tin of condensed milk in a bowl of boiling water, naturally it burst and he was sprayed with droplets all over, causing him to run around the camp in agony. It was also a blazing hot day at that. It puzzled me as to where they obtained that water, because it happened to have been the worst drought in Italy for 25 years in 1943.
There was in our camp a person whose name I seem to remember as being Arthur Helliwell, who kept our spirits up somewhat with his 'over-the-wall' sketches, which he performed with music-hall perfection.
Excitement mounted when, night after night, numbers of Junkers 52 troop-carriers were flying very low over our camp, their lights showing over the ground, as they were landing in the near distance. These, we were informed, were landing in order to take German reinforcements over to Tunisia, whereas they were evacuating them from there as fast as they were able to do so! This was getting on for 13th May, when the 1st Army had finally driven them out of Africa altogether.

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