We have listened to a moving tale from Eileen Ambrose of Hardwick, Cambridge. Eileen recalled for us the first Christmas following the end of the second world war, a time of scarcity. Her neighbourhood was asked to entertain German POWs who had not yet been repatriated. The Ambroses invited three prisoners of war to share their fairly meagre Christmas lunch, and when they arrived there was an awkward silence. In broken English they introduced themselves - an elderly bearded soldier, a shopkeeper whose shop had been devastated by English bombing, and a young man with nothing to say.
The family's small children hid. Eileen takes up the story: 'I ran upstairs to fetch our third child, who was asleep, and brought him downstairs. In a moment the whole scene changed. Fritz, the elderly soldier, held out his arms to cuddle the baby. Hans, the little shopkeeper from Cologne, tickled his toes, and Franz, the lanky teenager, fished in his pocket for a snapshot of his girlfriend back in Germany.
'Suddenly we were caught up in a Christmas fantasy: war-time grub, but we managed to obtain a bottle of good Rhine wine. All three prisoners had brought home-made presents, not only for us but for our children as well. The ice had been broken. We sang British songs and German ones, including the famous 'Tannenbaum', and I was presented with a home-made brooch and my husband with a cigar - how they got hold of it we do not know. We danced around our small Christmas tree, exchanged photos and swung our two older children up to the ceiling. When at six o’clock the car arrived to fetch our visitors back, there were tears of happiness in more than one pair of eyes.
'After all these years I still have memories and momentoes of that first Christmas day. The war was over; it was peace again.'