Christmas Story from Normandy<= /u>

b= y: Clayton “Curly” Allen

Deborah Ziegler asked= in a recent newsletter if any of the members of the 167^th remembered = any Christmas stories from their time overseas.

Yes, Deborah, I do ha= ve a Christmas story from WWII.

It was Christmas time= in 1945. The 167^th was pushing on out of Normandy France. I was assigned,= along with a couple of other fellows, to secure a bridge. We were dispensed there= to make sure the Germans didn’t blow the bridge up. We were the round the clock guards.

The three of us were = camped out under the bridge on Christmas day. Two things happened that made it a f= ine Christmas day in spite of where we were and what we were doing. =

The first thing was t= hat our commanding officer came out to where we were to = bring us a hot meal. That cheered us up enormously. Christmas dinner! Hand delive= red.

Secondly, along with = our much appreciated meals, he also brought the mail. Mail was something we all look= ed forward to. I spotted my Mom’s handwriting on one of the boxes. =

Nestled inside the bo= x, was a fruit cake from Mrs. Anna Allen, my mother. She had lovingly made the dessert almost a month before. Can you imagine our delight? A homemade fruitcake that glistened with red and green candied citrus and raisins! My Mom had carefully mixed the batter in a big enamel bowl, stirring it with a wooden spoon.

English walnuts studd= ed the top of the cake. I could envision my mother thrashing the branches of a loc= al tree with the stick of a hoe or rake, causing the fruit to fall to the grou= nd all around her. She would then gather the walnuts still in their green outer husks in her apron. Later, she would extract those green jackets and let the two-valved walnut stones sit in a Mason jar for= weeks until she was ready for Dad to crack them and extract the meat. It was a ri= ght of passage when a boy in the Allen family could crack a walnut by laying two nuts in his palm and closing his = fist around them.

Anna Allen had wrapped the cake in wax paper. I imagined her saying a prayer for my sa= fety as she folded the ends in tight. She sent her gift across the Atlantic Ocean not knowing that it would arrive exactly on Christmas da= y.

Of course, we all sav= ored each bite, marveling at how the long journey had only made the cake taste better. Each bite brought back memories of our family’s kitchens smel= ling of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Mom must’ve soaked that fruitcake in brandy, because it warmed us right down to our toes. It was the perfect Christmas dessert for a bunch of young army engineers living like mythical trolls under a bridge. <= /o:p>

Years later, when Joh= nny Carson joked that there was really only one fruitcake that kept getting pas= sed around from generation to generation, I listened indulgently while he malig= ned the reputation of fruitcake. I knew that there had not been a crumb left of Anna’s fruitcake. Her fruitcake had made our Christmas a special one.