Poor Rations
Heroes Remember
Poor Rations
The basic ration was poor quality rice
which I guess in retrospect was good for us
because it had some husks left and so
on so... completely polished white rice perhaps
would not have been good for us.
filled with weevils, I guess that gave us our
protein. Some people used to try and pick them
out but that was hopeless.
So it was basically rice with tea which I don't think
was really made out of tea leaves, and vegetables,
sometimes not the real vegetable,
just the... not potatoes but potato leaves,
not carrots but the greens from the carrots and
stuff like that.
Now that's the basic ration that you could
rely on seven days a week.
I remember once we got I think it was octopus or
squid or something, horrible stuff.
Once we got a little bit of, I don't know,
fish heads, we got the odd, we got the odd thing,
but, of course, it was not a very balanced diet.
Now some people augmented the diet depending
on whether they had anything to sell or not over
the fence. Because you could get things.
You could get, I think we bought a pig once.
Since I'm Jewish and you're
not supposed to eat pig,
they said it was turkey for me and
pig for everybody else.
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