Were So Fond Of Pig Could Not Eat Him

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 304, 24 December 1945, Page 4

Were So Fond Of Pig Could Not Eat Him

Driver Charlie Jones (A.S.C. TankMovers): "My worst was at Sangro in Italy. We were road-making and the snow was up to your eyes. We were living in a haystack, but the food was good and there seemed to be about a thousand gallons of 'vino. . We had a pig called Percy, and were going .to kill him for Christmas, but we got so fond of him we had to sell him instead. We got £20 for Percy. They didn't use the road after we had made it."

Blacksmith R. J. Payne (H.M.N.Z.S. Gambia): "I'll never forget last Christmas in England. It was the coldest winter England had had for 50 years. We were on leave in Portsmouth, and I remember the bus we were in getting snowbound. While the men were pushing it out the women had to wade through the snow. I was married in England, and on that Christmas my wife and I tramped three miles in the snow

;carrying our seven-foot Christmas. tree. We were determined to make it a real English Christmas, and the tree and the holly helped to make it such. Mind you there was no poultry or pudding, but for all that it was still Christmas."

Sergeant Doug. Flett (24th Btn., who was captured in Greece): "No, Sir, my black Christmases are all forgotten. I'd like to help you, t)Utr-."

Private Gordon Logan (24th Battalion): "I was taken prisoner in 1941. We were torpedoed off the coast of Greece in an 'Iti' ship. They put us in a castle for a start and then into a pen we called 'dysentery acre.' It was exposed and the ground was frozen. On Christmas Day we were given watery macaroni, the water the meat had been boiled in, and two small loaves. An 'Iti' major turned on a couple of cases of currants at his own expense. There

>were 2000 men there and we got a spoonful each. 'Dysentery acre' was about two miles out of Patras."

Major W. K. King (21st Battalion): "It was in the Faenza area. We sent three patrols out on Christmas Day— one to depth the Sehio River, one to counter-attack a Jerry patrol which had infiltrated our lines; and one to act as a listening post. We were short of ammunition and food and the big idea was to get fowls— but the fowls were in no man's land."

Private Ron Ardley (19th Battalion): "Last Christmas I was in a prison camp at Marke Pouka, near Berchtesgaden. It was 30 below, Red Cress parcels had petered out, and our rations had been cut. On Christmas Day we were issued with one potato and some ersatz coffee, without milk or sugar." J. Buckley (3rd Div.): "My blackest Christmas was when I returned from the Treasuries, where several of my cobbers had been killed, and an old dear asked me if I had been overseas or in the Pacific!"