72 Thousand Christmas Puddings

Northern Advocate, 7 March 1942, Page 2

72 Thousand Christmas Puddings

As early as August last, 72,000 Christmas boxes began their trek from the Red Cross packing centre in London to Britain’s 70,000 men in the prison camps of Germany. The extra 2000 parcels are an insurance that everyone gets one. The first lap was to Lisbonj the next to Marseilles; then on to Geneva; and so to Germany. In each box was a Christmas pudping, a double ration of chocolate, chocolate biscuits, rye biscuits, jam, margarine, roast pork and stuffing, a tin of steak and tomato, condensed milk, four ounces of sugar, two ounces of tea, and a Christmas cake. Seven million two hundred thousand cigarettes went off at the same time in separate packages of 100—a double ration for each man. The value of this Christmas gift is £36,009. Nor has the Red Cross forgotten the little band of 11 British children in German internment camps. Each of them has been sent a special, parcel of barley sugar, boiled sweets, and so on. And. to one hospital in Belgium, where there are soldiers who have been lying on their backs since Dunkirk, has gone a consignment of jigsaw puzzles. The Christmas boxes were put together at 17 Red Cross centres in England and Scotland by 2500 packers, 2000 of whom did the work for nothing.