A Scottish soldier Dunkirk in 1940.

January 15 2020

There was a Scottish soldier that had been in Dunkirk

in 1940

and was one of the soldiers

left behind after the evacuation.

He was captured by the Germans

and after a fair bit of toing and froing

he ended up on a farm on the Baltic

where he spent nearly five years

helping a cabbage farmer.

Most of the cabbage went to make sauerkraut

and rest went to the farmer to sell and eat.

He learned about thirty different ways to cook cabbage.

One way he particularly liked

was steamed cabbage with fried crispy bacon.

The cabbage has to be fresh

and the bacon needs to have a bit of fat at the edge

so that the flavour stirs through the steamed cabbage.

I have tried this with Ayrshire streaky bacon

and it is delicious.

Many people have asked him why he did not escape and he said that the farmer said if he left the farm without permission and he was caught the Germans would hang him from a tree as a warning to other POWs in the area.

One day the sound of gunfire was heard and the farmer told him he had better head south as he stood a better chance of surviving with the British Army than he would with the Red Army who sometimes shot escaped prisoners as Stalin considered them to be traitors because they hadn't fought to the death.

So he set off smartly to the south where he managed to reach Denmark where some Danish people hid him, until the war ended.