" Inside a cookhouse at one end of the enclosure was a row of soup- boilers.

The village had been much shelled, first by Italian and then by Austrian guns, and there was not a house remaining undamaged, though several had been patched up as billets and cookhouses by British troops.

Now the English husband of the German woman, though he had spent most of his life in Hamburg, though perhaps he had been born in Germany, had been interned and, however large his bank account, was taking his place with his pannikin in the stalls in front of some cookhouse for his ration of cabbage soup.

At this time the village was being heavily shelled by 5.9's, and our cookhouse on the outskirts was all but hit, shells bursting all round it in a circle.