Risking Your Life for Eggs

With our armoured cars, we had these big ammunition boxes strapped to the front fenders that we put our clothes in and stuff like that. Well we would use them or at least one of them and fill it full of straw or hay and we would get eggs from the Arabs in Sicily and the Italians in Italy. We always had eggs, most of the time. And there would come a time, one time, when we were . . . if we couldn't use our vehicles too much we were put back in the infantry. We took infantry work. So we were holding a line, we're here, there's a farmhouse and buildings right here and just the other side of that were the Germans, not very far. And we would go out, three or four or five men at a time and we're on night patrol. And the Germans would do the same. Sometimes we would clash and sometimes we wouldn't. This one time, and I was a sergeant then, this one time I took three other guys with me and we were out on the dark and I said to them once we got out there, I said, "Get in these bushes and stay there. I'm going to see if I can get some eggs." Cause we were just about out of eggs. I went in this barn. You wouldn't believe the eggs that were there. Obviously, the farmer and everything had left for ages. The chickens were still there. Oh this was great. So I found a box or something, I just forget what it was, I found something that I could put these eggs in. And I started putting these eggs up and I heard a noise. A couple of noises, you know and I'm sort of . . . it was a big old barn with lots of bits of rooms and I kind of looked through an aperture and I know there were Germans cause we were the only people there and they were whispering to each other and they're collecting eggs. So I never said anything and I just about got what I had come for and I put a few more in and left. As I say in the book, can you imagine risking your life to get some eggs?