Like a veritable Indiana Jones, Danie had to be enormously practical and resourceful – as a cook in North African desert field kitchens, in the POW camp kitchens of Benghazi, Sardinia and Italy, as a foraging escapee in the hills of Tuscany, and as a volunteer fighter in the Italian Resistance. He had entered the war with the naive ideal of saving the world from injustice, remained cool and compassionate despite the horrors of war, and finally found that his marriage and family were his most precious possessions, especially being able to enjoy these in times of hard-won peace. Then, more than fifty years later, he had the ultimate experience of being guest of honour at the Castello di Montalto in Tuscany, where he had had to steal or beg for food during the war.
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