Retelling a story

I've been watching The War by Ken Burns, a documentary about World War II. Again. I got hooked several years ago when it was shown on the PBS channel. Seven 2-hour episodes, it's one of the last things I remember making sure I could watch when it showed on TV. They focus on people from 4 cities around the U.S.; Sacramento, CA; Luverne, MN; Waterbury, CT; Mobile, AL. They interview a couple dozen people still alive at the time of the documentary who either fought in the war or who had family fighting in the war.

It's not that I enjoy war. I like knowing what went down and I like knowing details. How'd we get sucked into it? How'd we manage to take care of both Europe and Japan at the same time? Near as I can tell, WW2 was the last war where this country was provoked on our soil by another whole country. They started it (Pearl Harbor), we finished it. Had we all sat idly by being non-violent, my pacifist friends, things would be different now and maybe not in a good way. I don't like it...... but I understand.

But all that aside, one of the parts I like the most about The War is the stories some of the old folks have, and they found a few that can really tell a story. I think my favorite overall is Katharine Phillips, a woman from Mobile, AL, who has about the best southern belle drawl there is and she's a hoot.

The story I came here to post, though was from Ray Leopold of Waterbury, CT. It's a story from when he was stationed in the Ardennes Forest in France as the Germans were trying to break through... the Battle of the Bulge. To the best of my memory, and I forget what the special occasion was... perhaps Christmas. Imagine a troop who had been ill-equipped for cold weather, who was surrounded by Germans on all sides, who probably hadn't had a real bath in months, ready for this meal:

They had blown up our chow truck. So we had food stations scattered far apart so that if a shell hit, they'd only get 2 or 3 of us instead of a whole crowd of us. And we had our mess kits and we got them out and we'd go from station to station getting our meal.

At the first station, the man would put two slices of bread, side by side. Then we would walk down to the next station and, at this station, the man put this big, magnificent, half-inch thick slab of juicy roast beef that covered almost the whole two slices of bread. The next man dipped in and put a ladle of gravy over the roast beef. At the next station, we got a scoop of dried, reconstituted peas and carrots, off to the side. It was proper, and it was good. And at the last station, the man reached down and scooped up a huge ladle of chocolate pudding and he put it down right there on top of that wonderful roast beef, covering it from one side to the other. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried chocolate pudding on roast beef but, whatever insult that roast beef suffered from having chocolate pudding all over it, I still remember the taste to this day. And it was delicious!