An eggy soldier digs in and awaits the big push.
With this being the centenary year of the First World War™, we ask Harold’s oldest living conscientious objector about life in the second best conflict in history.
“Kids these days take a boiled egg for granted I suppose”, suggests George Butler, 119. “But back then, the warmed chicken foetus had only just been discovered, by a chap in Berlin who ate something that fell out of a hen and landed in a kettle.
“They weren’t called eggs straight away, no no no. Until 1915 they were known as ‘kaiser orbs’ or ‘hun balls’ if you were common. Anti-German feeling was so strong that omlettes were eventually considered an act of treason.
“That’s why in Harold, we had the famous ‘chicken trials’ of 1914. All the kids cheered when a bantam broiler was found guilty of Germanism and tied to the church and shot. You could still see the bullet holes in the old vicar right up until his death in 1986.”
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