大象传媒

Chapter 13

What a place and under such circumstances to celebrate ones fortieth birthday, but Mick decided that celebrated it must be and so we got to work, at this period the black market was in grand form and I was putting in full time in the cookhouse and had shall we say rather more chances of putting on a good feed, but I did not want to take too much advantage of my employment. The strength of our party was to be four consisting of John Barker, Jack Green who had walked along the coast with me, Mick and myself and was to be held during the evening after 2nd sitting, as much cooking as possible to be done on our own stufa. The day dawned, Mick spent the afternoon in preparation, all that I had to arrange was the sweet and wine, which were easy. We both had a good store of tinned foods; in addition Mick had received an American food parcel that helped considerably. I prepared the sweet during the afternoon in the cookhouse, I borrowed a tablecloth and crockery from the mess and at 7.30 pm we all sat down to a nicely decorated table. Mick was chef and waiter and right well did he do it, first soup, obtained from Mick's American food parcel, lovely thick and creamy, followed by fish, herrings and tomatoes, from our own Red Cross parcel, nicely fried, entree was cold bacon and fried eggs, real eggs Sticky obtained these from an Italian Carabineri, during each course wine was served, then of course came the sweet which was my contribution and is really a story in itself.

By various means and over a fairly long period I had accumulated about 7 days bread ration, which did not amount to much, 7 doughnuts, which of course were very stale, in addition I had raisins from a Canadian food parcel and custard powder from a British parcel, together with some margarine. This I took to the cookhouse and started off, the bread I grated up very finely crust and all and mixed the raisins in and added some condensed milk from the mess until it looked like a suet pudding, but a bit on the small side. The cooks were called into conference, what could we add, a couple more loaves were added as were 4 or 5 eggs, 陆 lb pound of margarine, 1 lb of sugar, 6 apples minced up and also in went 2 lemons, now it began to assume enormous proportions. Next we rolled it up in a bit of cloth, it then measured 22 inches, but how to boil it was the bother, it would just go into a tea bucket, so in it went and on to the fire it went and boiled for an hour and a quarter and by then was 6 inches round and 2 foot long, a real good looking pudding. My next problem was the custard; one small packet of custard powder was insufficient for a pudding of such gigantic measurements. Here again the cooks came into play, the milk used was condensed milk about 陆 water and 陆 milk, but then we decided it was far too thin, at this point the head chef decided to take over and said that he would make the custard for me and By George! Did he produce a masterpiece, he quickly turned it from ordinary to egg custard by adding 19 eggs, it should have been 20 but he dropped one, plus some more condensed milk. The final result was absolutely delicious, never before or since have I tasted the like and what is more, there was plenty of it, a whole soup tureen full. After this was prepared I had to smuggle it up to my bed cot, it was so big that I had to make 2 trips and even then could not shut my cupboard door. When we were ready for the sweet John was sitting with his back to my cupboard, so I said to him, hand out the sweet, John. He casually turned around to do it, and put his head into my cupboard and said "Good God Almighty what is this" and his eyes nearly popped out and even more surprised when he was told to hand out the custard. Now at this stage of the proceedings we were fairly full and satisfied however John who was 6 foot and had the appetite of a horse was still game so were we. The pudding, up to now I had been a little dubious as to what it would taste like and hoped that the custard would cover the taste, but it was a pudding to beat all puddings, simply grand, we each had enormous helpings and decided to save the balance for the next day, but John couldn't wait till the next day and commenced eating it on his way to bed. We finished up with coffee, cheese and biscuits and Marsala. After a game of cards we just lay back on our beds and slept it off. The only one to suffer any ill effect was Jack Green who suffered from indigestion, but I enjoyed it immensely.

As our camp was a permanent one there were but few changes because the accommodation was insufficient but early in 1943 quite a large party did arrive. They were subject to the usual scrutiny by other and older prisoners, I walked by their baggage to see if I could recognise any names but couldn't so assumed that there was nobody that I knew, afterwards retiring to the cookhouse to prepare a meal for them. 1 had occasion to go to the orderly room to find out the exact numbers when somebody said to me "I saw an officer with your badge up Poey", I immediately shot over to the Infirmary where they were being temporarily housed, walked in and said " anybody of the Royal Sussex here", there was a chorus of yes and met eleven officers of the Regiment, what a surprise, I knew none of them except one by name, but they knew all about me, they being of the same Battalion that I had been PSI. Mick and I soon got moving and had them all up for tea and a feed; I issued them with cigarettes that had been supplied by the Regiment. What talks we had they lasted well over a month, all about the Regiment, all the people I knew, the laugh their CO had when he heard of my capture. Two came from Eastbourne so I heard a lot about home. The only thing that suffered was our food store that was sadly depleted in

Chapter 14

I have mentioned before the subject of food and it must crop up again in the telling of this story. Among the prisoners in camp were a number of farmers who decided that we should produce as much of our own food as possible and they soon got to work, but nothing much could be produced, a very few seed potatoes left over from the previous year which did not come to much and gave us about one potato per man, a very small amount of spring onions and but very little of anything else, that was all in the market garden line. From the contractor 3 pigs or shall I say piglets were obtained, they were fed on the swill from the mess for a time, one unfortunately got killed by a gate falling on it during the night. We made some soap from it; mind you there were 500 officers. We were therefore left with 2, these thrived for a time and grew, but as times got harder there was but little swill from the mess and so they had to go without. It was a funny sight daily to see these 2 pigs when let out of their sty run straight across the quad to the cookhouse. Owing to the shortage of food it was decided to kill them off, early one morning Pte Feist killed them in the presence of the agriculture class. The pigs were not very big but there was high excitement in the camp at the prospect of a bit of pork. But alas there was trouble ahead, we had slaughtered a pig without the authority of the Italian Government and so contravened the law of the land, the police therefore removed the carcasses. Everyone in camp was highly indignant, several meetings were held between the Italian Commandant and the SBO, eventually they came to an agreement, we had to hand over a certain amount of pig fat to the Italians and we could have the rest. The evening that they were consumed the pigs heads were paraded round the mess with musical honours; we each got a minute portion of pork. That was the last of the pigs.

Chickens were also obtained, I had 12 hens and 2 cockerels in the kitchen yard, eggs were very few, they all died of Gapes and went about yawning, I used to watch the roosters doing their stuff, very interesting. But the rabbits were the funniest of all, we started off with a very few and intended to breed, it was calculated by the ones that knew that by Christmas there would be sufficient rabbits for each officer to have one and we all looked forward to the future rabbit stew. The PMC made announcements in the mess periodically as to their welfare, but we never got above a 100, the announcements would be something like this "Gentlemen since my last report our rabbits have increased by 12 but as one doe has eaten her young the total is not so much as last week" the lack of food was affecting them as well. Little Jimmy Wrench was OC Rabbits, he was an Air Gunner not much bigger man a rabbit himself but a jolly fine fellow he slept a few beds away from me. I used to go and watch him feed them, they were kept in a garden behind one of the quarters and there were rabbits of all shapes, sizes and colours, he used to put in a lot of time tending them and it was a pity that he didn't get better results for all his hard work. The Italians kept some rabbits as well in a nearby garden, one day one of them found its way into our pen so we had a 'buckshee' rabbit in our run. Mick spotted it, everybody had played the game with our rabbits and none had been taken for private purposes but with a rabbit belonging to the Italians, it was different. Mick very soon grabbed it and that night he and I sat down to one of the best meals that we have had in the mess, it was done to a turn, I scrounged the vegetables to go with it. There eventually came the day when all of the rabbits had to come to an end, this was a great day; we had a grand rabbit stew. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it as previously the only way to get a feed on rabbit was to go into hospital or as it was known the infirmary, when the doctor might order a rabbit for the patients as a change.

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