Condensed milk - Rodney Simpson

Extract from an interview with Claire Hall, 20 March 2010

Reproduced with permission of Rod Simpson

Amongst all the goodies we found the enemy had was a lot of food stuffs, and amongst the food stuffs was some condensed milk. The condensed milk had this label on, a lot of Chinese writing and so on. And it said ‘Pearl Condensed Milk’, canned in Singapore, you know made from finest New Zealand diary products. And so, when we found this we were very amused but the Aussie major who was rather a gung-ho guy, but I’m sure he was completely in jest but he called over Gus [Lieutenant Angus Rivers, 161 Battery] and said, “What’s this? You helping the enemy?” [Laughs].

So I got hold of this can of condensed milk and persuaded my colleagues – I had two new colleagues by now, because the other two had been shipped out. So we needed replacements and was joined by a guy called Wayne Radavanovich and Brutus Brunton. They were now part of our group of four, and we sat around and we used the condensed milk to brew ourselves some coffee.