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During the movement of the 8th Army through Sicily, we came upon an Italian farm and the family on the farm made friends with us.
The farm had been occupied by a handful of Germans, unlike them we had a tank as protection so we had the complete advantage when it came to a shoot out, consequently we disposed of the handful of German infantry men as in all cases the tanks were parked at quite a distance apart over a large area, to counteract bombing aircraft etc. we were fortunate in being the nearest Sherman tank parked near the farmhouse where we very quickly became aquatinted with the father of the family consisting of two sons, one my favourite perhaps (Dominico) who taught me most of my Italian which I discovered years later was spoken very well with an excellent dialect the family also had 2 daughters one of which had been raped by the Germans, a brother who had tried to protect her had been shot which left the father one son and one daughter and the mother who we saw very little of, it seemed to be the thing for Italian women to stay in the background which she did. On one occasion we were invited to a ‘specialie mengaria’ (a special meal) not knowing what to expect since rationing was very short for them we sat down to the table and the mother brought in a dish which looked like a large ostrich egg I remember as a boy seeing similar things hanging up in Sainsbury’s shop window which was a bladder of lard the fact that this looked similar I suspected that we were having bread and lard for supper, however the father on cutting this up revealed that it was in fact cheese in which the very centre was a core consisting of millions of maggots he proceeded to slice the cheese putting this on a plate and a spoon fully of maggots and handing this around the table I sat for a long time staring down at this plate thinking what the hell am I going to do with this when I realised that the maggots were crawling to the edge of the plate and the maggots were committing harrie -carrie throwing themselves over the edge of the plate where upon I thought of a good plan if I carry on talking until such time they would all have thrown themselves off the edge. I could then thoroughly enjoy the cheese this was not to be as the father had suddenly realised that all of my maggots had deserted me so quickly lifted up my plate and said ‘aspect all momento (one moment) when he scooped the maggots back onto my plate! I then decided that there was no alternative but to do what he had done which was to squash the maggots with a knife into a paste and spread them onto the bread!

Our second invitation to dinner was several days later when we knew that a goat had been slaughtered something that had been hidden from the Germans what part of it we were going to have didn’t dawn on us until the mother brought in this dish and I like an idiot asked ‘what was it’ Dominica as I say was the English speaking member of the family repeated to the others what I had said ‘what is it’ there was a burst of laughter from everyone it was 2 days later that he explained to me what part of the goat we had been we had been eating,.apparently it is a great delicacy - the penis I still to this day very much doubt if this is true as Dominica had a great sense of humour!

After a 10 day stay I became very friendly with the father whose name I don’t think was ever mentioned he was just known as ‘father’ one day he asked me to take a trip he wanted to show me where he had hidden his favourite horse. Prior to the war he had apparently owned a string of very rare horses but these had been confiscated by the Germans which the exception of ‘Stallina’ (name of the horse) who was almost white, knowing nothing of horses to me it appeared to be something special and from the look in his eye it obviously was! He held it by the mane and said to me this is for you.

My only action was to refuse the gift and appear as humble as I possibly could how much longer we were going to stay in this area we had no idea and I was told by the father since I wouldn’t take the horse that he would lend me an English racing saddle which at some earlier time had been an award for his breeding knowledge of horses I could therefore use Stallina and the saddle as long as we were in that area. Each day I rode Stallina, the day we left I didn’t go to the stable to see Stallina or the father to say good-bye after all of his kindness, I didn’t know how!

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