Well tough on you, Edwin. No one asked you to spend your Christmas here - in fact it amazes me how throughout the War there was no restriction on any dronish ghoul turning up in the war zone ostensibly to support the allies - though with what - and to prove a burden on an already overloaded administration and getting in everyone's way when they hung about in the hope of seeing violent deaths on a grand scale. So if Edwin Galf's feet got chilbrains - regretably not on record - I am delighted. But what a brilliant name for a villain anyway - Too late, I've copyrighted it, bodice-ripper script writers!
Forgive me a little seasonal levity; I am sure it abounded in the Crimea.
We can at least be grateful to Edwin for a very graphic description of the scene after Church Parade was over: "The thought never occurred to us of the extreme difficulty of getting up a genuine Christmas dinner; but if the reader could only have been transferred to that roadside for one short hour, and have observed the numerous equestrians galloping home in their uniforms, bearing upon the backs of their ponies all kinds of comestibles to make up their dinner, he would have had a full appreciation of the anxiety displayed to do honour to, and keep up the established and home-hallowed character of the day. Men were rushing wildly by with geese on their ponies, with vegetables, with boxes just arrived from England containing the plum pudding from home - with preserved meat tins, with champagne bottles, and each had something across his saddle necessary to make up the recognised idea out here of a sumptuous entertainment."
Plum puddings had been sent from home on an individual basis and for the majority of the rank and file, ingredients were supplied by Mrs Seacole. As Edwin continued:"Nor were the soldiers forgotten, for, as we passed by camp after camp, the cheers of the men resounded through the air. The colonels and officers had shown the greatest desire to see that their regiments fared well on this day, and there was hardly one mess table in the Crimea that did not groan beneath plums and dough, mixed together with what culinary science I will not attempt to say."
