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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV/ ´óÏó´«Ã½ London on behalf of Bill Austin and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Austin fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Christmas Eve 1944, Unit, Parachute Regiment 8th Battalion — Salisbury Plain. Taken by truck to Dover, spent the night in Dover. Christmas morning across the Channel to Calais, in trucks through snow and ice to Belgium. First night stopped in a village billeted with locals. My friend and I were in a house with a couple and two children, had rations, corned beef, biscuits etc, these poor people had nothing. We shared our rations and the lady of the house made a meal.

Next morning on into Ardennes Forest, up to front line in the snow in the forest, stayed there for two or three days, occasionally fired on, living on our basic rations. We made tea by melting snow and shaved in the water as well. After three days we came out of the front line into a village. Billeted in a barn, the farmer had cattle and pigs. Someone had the bright idea of having one of his pigs. Sergeant said we would pool our money and buy the pig from the farmer, which we did. The farmer said we could choose our pig. We were only eighteen or nineteen at the time. We said who is going to kill and butcher it. One of our unit said he was a butcher in civy street, so obviously he got the job. We picked a pig and five or six of us grabbed it. We were issued with a fighting knife and someone shoved the knife into its neck, blood spurted out and the pig ran away. We caught it again and finally killed it. It was hung by its back legs to drain the blood. The next day someone got a big fire going with pine logs & our so-called butcher chopped it into lumps and boiled it in a big drum over this fire. That was one of the best meals we had had since we left England!

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