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During my stay in Palestine I stayed for a while at camp 22 Nathanya. When I was at the camp it was mid January time 1946, the weather was good and the lads were a friendly lot including two of the lads a lance corporal and his mate who were a bit of a happy go lucky devil may care types but always ready to help anyone.
When some of the lads took the truck and the rubbish to the tip they had to pass thru an orange orchard and when they came back they filled a sack with lovely thick skinned large Jaffa oranges which they put in a large bath in the mess room for any one to help themselves too.

When in England all webbing kit was usually blancoed (a green or white water based pigment)
In Germany when the war was on they were not so fussy.
But in the Middle East when I was there all webbing had to be scrubbed clean and a morning inspection took place. One of the lads a corporal got the idea of enhancing his webbing by getting concrete dust off the floor of the tent base, and rubbing it into his webbing and it made a difference. At the morning inspection the inspecting officer congratulated him on his webbing and made a comment to the rest of the lads that there was no reason why every ones webbing should not look like that. Which did not go down very well with the rest of the lads. So some one thought that they would enhance the corporals webbing some more.

They poked a stick down the latrine and smeared some excrement on his webbing. Needless to say the corporal reported it to the camp officer, who called us all on parade and he asked anyone that had done this deed to step forward, no body did so the next question was did any one knew who had done it, no body did, so we were all confined to camp until it was sorted

The next thing was they appointed an investigating officer who had us all into the
office one at a time ,with the questions ,where were you at the time of the deed ,did I do it, did I know who had done it ,did I know who might have done it , and several other questions, but I could not help. Not knowing anything about it at the time

They found the culprit it was the happy go lucky devil may care lance corporal and he was sentenced to a months imprisonment at the Glass House at Cairo (which was a military prison run by the army and was very strict, every thing was done at the double, I believe)

I happened to be at Nathanya camp when he returned minus his stripe and I have never seen such a change in a man. His happy go lucky devil may care attitude had gone he was very quiet and morose and did not speak to anyone much.
I don鈥檛 know how he got on as I left the company soon after. 2

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