During the advance through the Liri Valley we came upon an area where the Germans had a great number of weapon pits and it looked like Stan and the Perths had been through here, as it was definitely where a good fight had occurred. Lots of machine gun ammunition, a fine pair of Zeiss opticals, or I should say, the remains of periscope, as dead center a Canadian infantry sniper had shot a hole right through them. What a prize but now worthless. Amongst the other odds and ends were a number of German gas masks. If you found their gas masks you knew they were really retreating in a hurry.
The German never discarded his gas mask until the last moment of retreat. The only other item he kept was his greatcoat coat, regardless of weather.
Looking around I came upon some food in a trench, a dozen cans of King Oscar sardines, Fabrik Norge, a box of cheese, and two large twenty pound boxes of a hard jam. One box of jam had been opened and the hornets were coming in and chewing of pieces off jam and flying away with it.
I called the rest of my buddies with me to see this find. Some one said you’re not going to eat any of that are you? I said of course and opened a can of King Oscar's finest and ate all of the can. I then reached in a pocket found a hard tack biscuit and scooped up some of the hard jam to put on the biscuit. A couple said do not eat that it will likely be poisoned. I replied if it were poisoned all the hornets would be dead.
I did not mention that I had scraped some dead hornets off the jam, but I thought their death was from overeating. Eventually all the sardines and about thirty pounds of jam were all eaten in the next day or so. We were thinking at the time that the Norwegians were playing the fiddle on both sides supplying food to the Germans in specially marked cans. I suppose they did not have much choice to supply or not supply .