WW1 Christmas

Turkeys, Trenches and Tommys

A History of the WW1 Christmas Dinner

Introduction

Christmas on the front line

Christmas Dinner Behind the lines

Christmas First Hand

'In the Christmas 1917, when we came out of the line, we were given a treat for Christmas at a place called Poperinghe. The whole battalion were put into rows of huts. And for two days, starting off the first morning, the officers and sergeants came round and brought us our early morning tea, breakfast, dinner, tea and everything, the whole two days. We never had one parade those whole two days. And we were treated as though we were the officers. Every officer and every sergeant spent the whole of his time bringing us food and smokes and that. All smoking away, singing away, food galore. It was the only time, I shall never forget.'

Christmas 1916 was an awful winter. My Christmas dinner was a tin of bully beef which I’d dug out of the snow, because it had been discarded by the previous occupants of the gun pit. The cook, together with other people – the commissariat – the ration lorry couldn’t come because the roads were in such a state on account of ice and snow. And so my Christmas was a tin of bully beef and he made a hash of it, you know what I mean. He just fried it up and made a hash of it. That was 1916, yes.

Auxiliary Christmas

THANKS!