大象传媒

Towards the very end of the war, as our troops moved deep into Germany, our unit took up its final location of the war. We were based in a big hospital in Celle.

As the war came to an end, my driver Sammy Bates and I were ordered to transport two nursing sistes from Celle to Flensburg on the Danish border.

We dropped the sisters off as required, and were very grateful that they arranged both food and a good night's sleep in the hospital to which they had been assigned.

We were meant to come back by exactly the same route the next day, but we diverted from our route and ended up going out of way and getting lost around Lubeck. Eventually we ended up in a village where we decided we would try to find food and a bed for the night.

We went into a local establishment, where we bought a beer, although no food was to be had. We started talking to the locals (despite language difficulties) to ask for help in finding our way back to Celle, and ended up talking to two German women, who offered to cook us a meal.

It was after midnight, but we nevertheless went back to their flat and they cooked us a nice meal before we finally went to sleep downstairs (no hanky panky!). I slept on a sofa in the hall with my revolver under my pillow - just in case.

The meal itself was delicious, meat cooked in a roasting dish with gravy and potatoes, together with some vegetables, although we couldn't identify them.

The next day, before we left early in the morning, we thanked them for the meal which we thought had been rabbit. However, we then discovered that we had dined on a member of the local cat population! The first and last time I've ever eaten cat.

We finally returned to Celle later that day, attributing the delay in our return to a breakdown.

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