Goat's Breakfast

After six months in Dhavlos on the north east coast of Cyprus, it was decided that the 1st Battalion Welch Regiment should be moved from their tented camp to proper barracks in Dhekelia, near Larnaca on the south coast. Many of us, me included, thought that Dhavlos was the ideal up-country station. But there it was, the Army is always on the move and we had to hand over our delightful camp by the sea and other rifle company bases to a field regiment of the Royal Artillery.
Gunners are not usually required to do such things as search culverts for mines every morning, keep the peace between Turks and Greeks, search villages for terrorists and weapons and put out forest fires deliberately started by terrorists to increase soldiers' work-load, To give them their due, they learned their lessons in Cyprus and developed their expertise for infantry work a few years later in Northern Ireland.
Captain Digby Rutherford, the Second-in-Command of the battery which took over the camp in Dhavlos, came up to me one day with a question which he thought I could answer. I can't remember what the question was or the answer I gave but, as far as Digby was concerned, it was overtaken by an event that imprinted itself on his mind for the next fifteen years.
We had been chatting for a minute or so when I became aware that Taffy, the regimental goat, was nosing around looking for something to eat. He found what he wanted in the form of a batch of acquitance rolls which Digby was holding in one hand behind his back. Digby had just paid his gunners and the hundred or so signatures on the long pieces of paper was proof of that fact.
Taffy was quite delicate with things he liked to eat and Digby only became aware of what was happening when Taffy licked his thumb. Having nothing left except a few shreds of paper, he shouted: "Look what your bloody goat has done!"
Nobody speaks about the regimental mascot to an officer of the 41st Foot like that and I told Rutherford that I would hold him responsible for any bowel disorders incurred by the goat from eating Royal Artillery acquitance rolls.

We left Dhavlos a few days later and I didn't see Digby again until 1973 - fifteen years later.
I walked into the officers' mess at the Prince of Wales's Division Depot in Crickhowell, South Wales and ordered myself a gin and tonic. A small stocky officer with a bushy moustache who had been posted in as officer-in-charge of the Army Youth Team, got up from the bum-warmer in front of the fire and told the mess waiter to make it a large one and charge it to him.
He clasped me by the hand and looked earnestly into my eyes: "Not a day has passed without me thinking about that awful gaffe I made the last time I saw you," he said. I had not the faintest idea who he was or what he was talking about, but I didn't let on. "I wondered if I would see you here," he continued, "and what your reaction would be." The waiter arrived with my large gin and tonic, so I sat with him on the bum-warmer.
I have a well practised routine which I use for one sided conversations like this. "Do you mean to say we haven't seen each other since that place ---- what was it called?" Dhavlos," piped Digby, "where your goat ate my acquitance rolls. I wouldn't have blamed you if you had punched me on the nose for what I said about the animal."
For the next three days, as soon as I entered the mess, the waiter presented me with a large gin and tonic. It began to be embarrassing and, eventually, I told Digby he had purged his contempt.