[Sca-cooks] Return to Plum Pudding! Oh NO!

[James Prescott]

On the appeal of Christmas puddings.

I recently performed a reading of letters from the trenches about the
unofficial truces that sprang up during World War I at Christmas time
in 1914.

 From a letter written by Private Frederick Heath, probably of the
North Staffordshire Regiment, date not known but probably late
December 1914 (it was printed in the North Mail on January 8th
1915, and recently discovered and transcribed by Marian Robson),
about one fraternization between British and German troops:

"Here was no desire to kill, but just the wish of a few simple soldiers
(and no one is quite so simple as a soldier) that on Christmas Day, at
any rate, the force of fire should cease. We gave each other cigarettes
and exchanged all manner of things. We wrote our names and addresses on
the field service postcards, and exchanged them for German ones. We cut
the buttons off our coats and took in exchange the Imperial Arms of
Germany. But the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding. The sight of it
made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder, and at the first
bite of it they were our friends for ever. Given a sufficient quantity
of Christmas puddings, every German in the trenches before ours would
have surrendered."


Thorvald