A Christmas Card to the Red Cross
(A true story by Bill Livingstone, 1995)
The frigid air was crystal clear outside the shuttered barracks windows and the full winter moon glistened off the hard packed snow. In the dim light from the guard tower a German guard patrolling the perimeter fence pulled the collar of his great coat tighter around his shoulders. His big guard dog strained against his leash, anxious to get back to the relative warmth of its kennel.
The guard could hear the voices of hundreds of men inside the barracks singing Christmas carols. The Christian melodies were familiar to him, but the words were not. This was because they were English. The carols were sung by American Prisoners of War.
It was Christmas Eve, 1944, and the snow had been on the ground for several weeks at Stalag Luft IV, located near Stettin Poland, a few miles from the Baltic Sea. Our prison camp was composed of four double barbed wire fenced compounds, with a guard tower located about every 200 feet along the fence lines. In each compound there were ten large barrack buildings with ten rooms in each barrack. There were usually about 20 men living in each of the 25-foot-square rooms with enough built-in double-deck bunks for everyone. The bunks had straw mattresses and each man had one German Army blanket. In wintertime we went to bed fully clothed.
At the prisoner count in the compound that morning a German officer announced in his broken English, "The German people honor the tradition of Christmas, and we respect your desire to celebrate this day in your traditional manner as best you can. Therefore, the guards will take a number of you into the forest this morning to cut and bring back a Christmas tree for each room in the camp."
For about a week now the POWs had been talking about Christmas, thinking of their loved ones at home, and preparing for some sort of celebration -- at least recognition of the fact that it was a special day.
Our room leader, Murph, suggested, "Whata you say we get a full chocolate ration from each guy in the room, melt it down, and mix it with some dried fruit and crumbled graham crackers and cookies, and make a sort of chocolate cake for Christmas?"
He got responses like, "Sounds good to me." "Great idea." and "Let's do it!"
If this sounds like POWs in Germany during WW II had it made -- well perhaps. And the reason: The Red Cross. The ingredients we used to make our "Christmas Cake" came from the food parcels we received each week from the Red Cross. They were trucked into Germany by the International Red Cross through Switzerland, a neutral country.
In the POW camp we essentially got two kinds of food: The American Red Cross American food parcels and German food cooked in the camp's central kitchen. The Red Cross food came in corrugated boxes about a foot square and six inches high. The ten pound food parcels provided minimum nourishment for one man for one week.
Almost all the Red Cross food could be eaten "as is," or could be cooked if heat was available. For example there was good old canned Spam, beef stew, cheese, powdered milk, dried fruit, something called "reconstituted butter," some kind of crackers or cookies, a small bar of "Swan" soap, and that all time favorite, a quarter pound bar of Hershey's sweet chocolate.
Two packages of cigarettes were also included in each Red Cross parcel. Everything in the parcels was traded among the prisoners with all items valued in packs of cigarettes. Spam and the chocolate bar, for example, were each worth three packs, beef stew was worth two, and prunes and cheese worth one each. For us non-smokers this was a bonanza.
One time I heard a guy yell down the central corridor of the barrack, "Anyone want to trade prunes for cheese?" So you see they had medicinal qualities too.
After the seven o'clock prisoner count in front of the barracks each morning, we cooked our own breakfast on the potbellied stove in our room. This took a while because the top of the stove was only about a foot in diameter, and everyone wanted to use it. Breakfast was usually a slice of fried Spam and a slice of German black bread toasted on the stove top with the butter that came in the Red Cross parcels. The German bread had straw in it and heaven knows what else. Sawdust, I guess. Lunch was something else out of the Red Cross parcel.
Dinner was German food and was usually some kind of soup. It was cooked by KPs in a central kitchen and brought to us in our room. My first meal at Stalag Luft IV was what we jokingly called "ball bearing" soup because it was made of garbanzo-like beans which were quite hard. It was my first hot meal in a while so it smelled and tasted good to me. I commented to one on my new buddies, "Hey, this soup ain't half bad."
"It would be a lot better without the weevils," he replied.
"Weevils?"
"Yeah. Open up one of those beans and have a look".
So I got one onto my spoon and cut it open with my knife (table knives were permitted). Sure enough a little black guy about an eight of an inch in diameter. And every bean had one. After a while one didn't think about it anymore.
No one was getting fat on the diet at Stalag Luft IV, but we ate quit well compared to political and Russian POWs who got no Red Cross food parcels. Those of us who went to chapel thanked God, and those who didn't, I'm sure, at least thanked their lucky stars, that the Red cross was there when we needed them most. Coffee and donuts at troop train stops were nice, but Red Cross food parcels in Allied POW camps all across Germany were a blessing.
On this Christmas Eve in 1944 the rooms at Stalag Luft IV smelled of evergreens -- an aroma that took us back to our homes and families. There was nothing to decorate the trees with; paper was in very short supply. We didn't exchange gifts because it was simply impractical, but we sang Christmas carols and played games. Something called "red dog" and gin rummy were most popular.
"Lights out" was to be at midnight on Christmas Eve; usually it was nine o'clock. The extension to midnight alone was reason for celebration. Of course we were all locked in the barracks by an hour before sundown everyday, including Christmas Eve.
By nine o'clock we were ready for our "chocolate cake," and everyone gathered around the table in the center of the room to get their share. With a great flourish Murph cut into our first cake since capture. He managed to get 24 pieces of approximately the same size and handed them out.
It was a strange, almost ethereal, moment when we all took a bite of our cake -- we all realized, this was it. This was it for the Christmas of 1944. This was the opening of Christmas gifts at home. This was our Christmas turkey, goose, or ham dinner with family gathered round. This was the moment of love for our moms, dads, sisters, brothers, and sweethearts. We were sure we would be with them next Christmas, but we also knew that this bittersweet moment would live in our memories forever.
Merry Christmas, Red Cross. May your pursuit of peace on earth and good will toward man from 1945 to 1995, endure forever.