Truly Hungry

We had almost enough to eat. We were all well, and the weather was moderate. One day the Germans gave us some cans of tongue, which were supplied through the Red Cross and had been sent from New Zealand. Gotty and I and some new friends, Rudy Wilde and Russ Goodwin, sat down at a table where some new POW’s were sitting. We could see they weren’t truly hungry. They had only been down a few weeks, or maybe only a few days, and the tongue was less than appealing to them. Gotty started it and we carried it on, we talked about a cow’s tongue and what the cow used her tongue for and the revolting objects she licked. The new POW’s decided one and all to donate the tongues to us four. They couldn’t stomach anything like that. But we could, we could eat almost anything that could be chewed and swallowed. We didn’t even feel bad about what we did. This meal was to be remembered as one where we were satisfied when we walked away from the table after eating our share and all of theirs.

Food was important, of course, and was big in our minds, but there was a great deal of discussion about sex too. I was to find as time went on you could tell how hungry the guys were when the only topic of conversation was food.

We also got sauerkraut, I don’t know from where, but we ate it. Many of us used our klim cans which had been the container for dried milk and sort of cooked it in the stove.

We always had brickettes of coal for the stove in this camp so we could make use of the stove, but with nothing to add to the sauerkraut, it was the same as when it was cold except it seemed better warm.

Some of the fellows mixed their dried milk with the jam and crackers that sometimes came in the Red Cross parcel and tried to make something called cake. It didn’t look like it, and I don’t think it could have improved the food they used.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999