Recently discovered photo of Tom in Rome
Further to Ron's "Postscript to Day Leave in Rome"
posted by Ron Goldstein at 3:39 pm
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Further to Ron's "Postscript to Day Leave in Rome"
Previous Posts
- Postscript to "Day Leave in Rome"
- The Victoria Cross: a symbol of Valour
- Putting the record straight
- Montgomery and the troops in Trieste
- The last two WW2 Lancasters
- The Two Types
- And then there were two
- A letter from Churchill to Ben Gurion
- ‘Hudson Bay’ during the Second World War
- Major Roy Farran 3rd Hussars and SAS
Contributors
6 Comments:
Ron - now that is funny - hardly felt like a saint though with ice cream melting at an increasing rate of knots - my friend Wee Wully Fenn from Glasgow is the same man who - during a long lecture in the main cinema in Bone(Annaba) in Algeria realised that he had forgotten to remove by consumption - one Cadbury's dairy milk bar which had now spread all over his KD uniform front - what a mess. We had to smuggle him back into camp,otherwise he might still be in the slammer !
They have recalled several batches of Cadbury's chocolate bars in Britain a few days ago for fear of Salmonella poisoning (True!). I'll bet none of you ever had that to worry about during the war!
Would you have been hospitalised from a chocolate bar in 1945? Sometimes I wonder what progress has been made .........
Joseph -
no need to wonder anout how much progress has been made in the past 50 years - the plain truth is - "not much".....we never worried about such things as food poisoning - all we worried about was not to get Gastro Enteritis
from eating too much fruit straight off the trees... we have become more sanitised these days and at the same time have more infections flying around as we appear to have "sanitised" our immune system down the toilet - apparently Rats and Mice have stronger immune systems than we do as they are fighting dirt etc all day long !
The lads in the desert never had too many illnesses as they didn't bathe every day - shock - horror - unheard of to-day ! Same applies to many things - we are born in a sanitised hospital - attend the same hospital with monotonous frequency and finally die there.
Just 80 years ago we were born in the midst of a family - grew up with all sorts of self attended illnesses - died in the centre of our families - unsanitary but happier than we are to-day...lesson there I think ! Children to-day have little sense of "family" as we have driven it out of them - give them a fiver and let them entertain themselves - and so they fall vitim to the drug lords ! Progress ?
That's an amazing photo! Er ... which one is Tom?
The house in which I lived throughout the war in Musadino had no internal water supply, like most houses in the village. We got our water from a public fountain, two buckets at a time.
In the mountains, like all lads, we learnt where all mountain streams were to be found. Fresh icy delicious water, I have yet to find or taste anything like it. We all knew where subterranean water and springs were, you cut a branch of wood, inserted it into the bank, then when the water flowed you withdrew the stick and carefully stripped the bark, cut the tube lengthwise in half and put it back in the hole and water, ice cool, flowed from it. My dad taught me how to do it; no one carried water with them. It was customary to leave the bark in place stopped with moss for the next person, who would replace it if required.
Then in April 1945 the South Africans arrived and seemed to declare the entire area's water undrinkable, resorting to boiling, disinfecting, and all sorts of games to the bemusement of everyone. If they ventured into the mountains they all carried khaki covered water bottles which became warm and tasted horrible, oblivious of the cool water around them.
I think it was a good few weeks before they calmed down and finally realised how excellent the water was. But somehow it never did taste the same.
Joseph -
just thought I would dredge up an old tale on how we kept fit but not altogether sweet smelling at all times. This reinforces the idea that we could do more in saving water by not bathing too oftern - and still keep the bugs at bay......
Hot Showers and Clean Underwear, Occasionally by Trooper Tom Canning - WW2 Site Helper
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