|
(Ref: 10485)
It was Christmas '44 and we were obviously looking round
for a Christmas dinner. Although turkeys in that part of
Italy at that time were very plentiful, it seemed to be
that every place we got to and wanted a turkey, the Canadians
had got there first. And they had more or less cleared the
place of turkeys for their Christmas.
So we thought "I don't know,
we're going to be without a Christmas dinner" and somebody
suggested that one or two nights before we'd come through
a farm, a big farm, where there were a lot of pigs…We decided
to go back to this farm and see what we could get. This
was at night-time. We took the truck back to this farm and
we came away with a little pig…
The only way we could get this pig
away, to stop it making a noise, was to get it out - and
this may sound terrible - the only way to stop it grunting
was to stick your fingers up its nostrils so it couldn't
make a noise. And somebody knew how to do this apparently
- and this was done.
So we got it in the back of the truck
and going back we had to go back through a road patrol,
which was manned by MPs [Military Police]. So of course
we were very undecided how we were going to get the pig
through the patrol. So we covered the pig over in the back
of the truck, hence the two fingers up his nostrils to keep
him quiet, and somehow or other we got through the patrol…
The thing was - where to keep the
pig? Where we were billeted were like flats with verandas
and we got this pig up into one of the flats and we just
blocked it in and let it loose on the veranda. Well, that
was all right until the CO came out in the morning and looked
up and saw the pig running around. He wants to know who's
responsible and of course we owned up. I said I was one
of them…
He [the CO] was what we used to call
"one of the boys" - although he was a Major he
was a very nice fellow - and I said "Well look, it's
obvious we're going to be stuck here for Christmas and the
lads of course had no Christmas dinner. So we decided to
go out and get some". So his words were: "You
can't keep the bloody thing up there forever, so you've
got to find somewhere for it to go". So we had to….
Anyway, to cut a long story short
- on the day before Christmas we had to approach the cook
staff to kill the pig and cook it. So this was agreed upon,
providing the Officers' Mess had a leg - so we agreed to
this - we had to. So of course the pig was killed and roast
and cooked and a happy ending to a Christmas - except for
the pig!
|
