大象传媒

As the war drew to a close, we had been marching east having been turned out of the POW camp at Fallingbostel a fortnight earlier and we had had nothing to eat or drink all that time.
We were sitting on the banks of the River Elbe when a barge chugged into sight. Then an RAF plane came and shot it up before our very eyes like sitting in a grandstand. Nobody ran for cover although some of our chaps had been shot at by 鈥渇riendly鈥� aircraft some days earlier. The barge stopped and pulled into the bank and later we were given a small ration of herring roes, from the barge presumably.

I didn鈥檛 fancy eating them raw but fortunately I was with a Canadian called 鈥淗appy鈥� who was evidently an outdoor type and he heated a smooth stone over a campfire and the roes cooked on a stone after a fashion but as this was the first mouthful after so long, one was not inclined to be fussy.

In the same place the German guards were seen driving a worried-looking cow along. The worries were justified because we were issued with a small piece of meat about the size of half a rasher of bacon which was cooked in the same manner.

Later a German guard offered me a chunk of bread in exchange for ten fags. This was a bonus but I felt uncomfortable munching this before all those hungry eyes.

After the British tanks passed through and the guards disappeared, a British officer turned up in a half-track and told us to make our way to Luneberg airfield. We had got hold of a German lorry and on the way one of our party commandeered a churn of milk from a dairy farm despite the vehement protests of the farmer. It was surprising how little of the milk we could drink - our stomachs had shrunk.

The lorry broke down and we got a lift on an army truck. The driver gave us a piece of army bread. How white and fluffy it seemed after all that roggenbrot (rye bread).

At Luneberg drome there was a NAAFI van (blessed normality) with a young woman serving cups of tea to the queue completely nonchalantly although she was far from home. Standing there drinking tea, the loudspeaker on the van announced the end of hostilities.

The Army (good chaps) fed us for a few days until we got a flight to the UK. They sent me on leave with double ration cards as my ribs were still showing. Grub at last.

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