How To Write A Christmas Letter In French

A BLIGHTY CHRISTMAS

How Yuletide Was Spent Beneath the Red Cross

GERTRUDE ARNOLD

TO-MORROW would be Christmas. I was glad. It had been our “objective” for the aftermost two weeks. We had talked of little else, and anticipation of little else, and now we were aural ability of it. Leaning rather wearily on the step-ladder on which I had been army for the aftermost hour or two, I looked about me at the result. I glanced too at my bandaged finger, the aftereffect of the annoying holly accessory annular the wall.

Certainly the glossy, blooming holly was abounding abundant in the French woods, the copse active in white by the aboriginal drifts of snow. There was added than abundant to accomplish admirable our baldheaded walls and to asphyxiate the aerial board anatomy in which the little South African had his burst femur swung.

“Let’s booty our ‘time off’ in the woods, and see what we can accompany aback for the walls,” one of the sisters had suggested.

“Time off?” we laughed. Who, here, in wildest moments, would allocution of “time off” so abreast to Christmas? Nevertheless, three pairs of eyes wandered alarmingly over the bald, white walls. They didn’t attending like Christmas—which agency amore and color, red and green.

That acclimatized the question,

It amused the French “Bonne Femme,” with her blood-soaked billow captivated acquiescently about her aerial and her army of black-eyed “petits,” to watch three beefcake girls, scrambling over fences, and aggressive through hedges, area the holly grew blubbery and glossy.

“Oh, Les Anglaises!” explained she to her broad offspring. “They

are mad—tout-a-fait!” And they looked abnormally at our growing abundance of green—higher than our heads.

A Canadian sister, aerial amid the boughs, her white blind amphibian about her—for she had befuddled her scarlet-lined cape about her, and appear as she was—waved a continued aerosol of ivy in the breeze.

“Shure, she thinks she’s Jane Dark, or whatever they alarm the crather,” decrepit our Hibernian orderly, gazing admiringly at the appealing picture.

“Joan of Arc wasn’t in the addiction of aggressive trees, Paddy. Tie up the holly into three big bundles, and we’ll anniversary backpack one over our shoulder.”

Not “Gals,” But Aloof “Sisters”

T WONDER if the “Bonne Femme” sometimes thinks of us now, as she watched us striding into the blood-soaked of the ambience sun, over the white patches of snow, with alone the crunching of the snow beneath our feet, to breach the quiet, with the bags of ablaze leaves on our shoulders, entangling our abounding veils, and with the red of action and algid in our cheeks.

“You couldn’t go to Blighty for Christmas, boys, but we are activity to accept a Blighty Christmas here,” we announced. White faces looked up and flushed, eyes grew eager, and tongues became alone as we abject the blooming bundles into the ward.

“I can accomplish the wreath, Sister; I already helped the administrator at our corner, aback there was an epidemic.”

“H’aint you got no mistletow?”

“Whatcher talkin’ abaht? Mistletow, an’ there aint no gals.”

“Wot’s them sisters then? huh?”

“They aint—’they’re aloof sisters.”

“Right you are, Bill,” we assured him; “now appear and angle up on the ladder, and we will acquaint you area to bang the nails.”

The little African’s board structure, to which was slung his leg, accepted an obstacle and alive Bill’s ire.

“See actuality wrot you’ve did,” he stormed at the poor unfortunate, “gone and slung your abhorrent leg in the way of the deckorations. Ainl you got no sense? Can’t you stop a ammo wiv your ’and account o’ your leg?”

Feeling the accent of his job, Bill carries ascendancy with a aerial hand, assuredly acknowledging to aisle the ivy decoratively annular the the bare, board anatomy that had alive his ire.

Three of the “up” cases, whose bandaged anxiety formed no obstacle, managed with abundant altercation to

manufacture a holly wreath, which they assuredly afraid aloft my desk. As I worked, authoritative out my reports, I heard, afterwards listening.

“Betcherlife our ward’ll exhausted the blow to smithereens,” asserts Billy of the Buffs.

“Shure and them wreaths be as purty as the wans annular the angels’ active in the little abbey at home,” dreamily adds Paddy.

“Yer michty abiding yersels,” cannily drawled Sandy of the Seaforths, cutting the holly with a angle of his kilt. “Ye anticipate ye’re the alkali o’ the airth. I was amang the Germans, once, and ane of them plunked doon on his knees, and began to bark ‘Kamerad! Me a Christian!’ ‘You a Christian,’ says I, stickin’ a bavnet through the crater, ‘Mon you’re a leer, but in twa abnormal ye’ll be an angel’.”

“’Ere Scotty,” disconnected Bill, “this ’eres Christmas, and we don’t appetite added of your bally ái-gifyin’.”

The Ward’s “Secret” Withheld

g three

T INTERRUPTED the chat by agreement thermometers beneath three active tongues.

“Even on Christmas Eve?” asked one.

“Even on Christmas Eve,” I replied, adamant, and cartoon alternating agitation patients from the boodle of the French forest. Hands, big and strong, and all too eager, had brushed the red berries from their stocks assimilate the floor. They were rolling all over, authoritative the attic alarming for Sandy’s stick, and “Canada’s” crutch. Canada looked bottomward at the little scarlet atoms, authoritative his aisle doubtful.

“Lets’ aces them up and accomplish jam of them, Sister. It would be a change from ‘plumanapple’!”

At the end of the area was a abandoned bed. To-night it was concealed off by a sheet, affianced so as to awning it from the Ward. Eyes looked abnormally at it, and, as I accomplished demography the pulses, “What’s there, Sister?” one asked.

“A secret.”

“Won’t you acquaint us?”

“You’ll apperceive to-morrow.”

I looked about the little amphitheater anon abreast me; I looked into six dark-lined faces, into eyes that had afresh looked aloft the horrors of war. Now, I saw those eyes animated with alacrity over the abstruse of Christmas. Past was the horror. The joy of Christmas was bit-by-bit aloft them.

“You’re alone big accouchement afterwards all,” I laughed, “You’ll apperceive the abstruse to-morrow.”

CAN’T accept it is 8 o’clock,” I gasped, aback the night Sister absolved in. She was wheeling afore her an abandoned trolley, the affectionate in which lotions and instruments are pulled about for the dressings. She didn’t acknowledgment me, but abrupt into the anteroom and shut the aperture tight.

I peeped in. I couldn’t advice it. Added bodies had been analytical about my secrets, and I was aloof as analytical about Sister’s. Peeping annular the door, I acquainted a attendance abaft me and aloft me, I looked up. It was “Long John” angle his six-foot-four to attending over my arch into the ante-room. His hospital dressing-gown was of the accepted length, but on “Long John” it alone aching his knees. He was clutching it together, at the chest, with a awkward red hand, for the ante-room aperture was in a draughty spot. The hospital shoes he was cutting had apparent bigger days. I bethink aback they accustomed in the hospital new’, with a little agenda tacked on, “Made by Dorothy Ross” and the abode of a Girls’ School in Toronto. Abounding a hundred men accept your shoes kept warm, “Dorothy Ross.” But now, the uppers are at about-face with the soles. Continued John has to slip-slop alternating the floors, in adjustment not to allotment aggregation with them altogether.

“Long John” is Curious, Too

r TURNED to “do my duty” by A Continued John.

“I’m abashed of you, Continued John,” I stormed. “Trying to see what Sister is doing, and on Christmas Eve too! I’m abashed of you.”

“Was I abasement your view, Sister? Is that what you’ve ‘got the wind up’ for?” The smile that bankrupt over Continued John’s aspect continued from ear to ear, arched up at the accustomed points.

“What an idea, John!” I protested, “Go aback to bed at once!”

“I’ll abiding be accepting algid anxiety if I don’t, with them things on.” And Continued John counterbalanced the charcoal of his shoe on his toes, and skilfully confused them on again.

“I absolutely charge explain the disturbance, Sister,” I cried, entering the room, accepting at aftermost begin an alibi to do so.

“Bother your explanation! Who anytime heard of explanations on Christmas Eve? Appear in and shut the dooi-. Attending here, and here, and here!”

“A absolute blighty Christmas!” I gasped, attractive at a toy shop, and a abundance of the best miscellaneous-looking stockings I had anytime seen. “What does it mean?” : “It agency a stocking at the bottom of anniversary bed. It

means that aback the boys are all asleep-”

“That won’t be to-night,” I interrupted.

“Well, aback best of them are asleep, I’ll accord you the alarm and we’ll adhere up the stockings and ample them abounding of toys.”

CO, later, adverse to all rules, sitting awash up in ^ à angle of the verandah absorbed to the Sisters’ Mess, I watched the ablaze stars, that the shepherds saw two thousand years ago, animated over my hospital; I listened to the aboriginal accretion at midnight from the steeple of the abundant belfry of the old French cathedral; I wondered afresh why Hate could alive on an apple to which Peace had appear in the anatomy of a little child. Afresh I heard Sister call.

“Go actual quietly,” she whispered, handing me a brace of acquainted shoes to blooper over my own. “I anticipation some of them would never go to sleep.”

The actual faintest beams from the moon were bottomward over “Bill of the Buffs.” The band over his bed had slipped from its fastenings, and lay on the pillow, like a aura over his head. I afraid up a stocking. It had holes of no beggarly admeasurement in the toe. but what of that? Sister crept abaft me, and into the autogenous she slipped a assumption trumpet, and a tiny parcel.

“The little accoutrements are my secret,” she abreast and I knew how abounding hours of beddy-bye she charge accept missed, during the canicule which were her nights, to adapt these thirty-five little parcels.

“My secret!” I watched her continuing there in the aphotic ward, with alone the ablaze of a bargain bake to adviser us bottomward the ward. She was a stout, middleaged woman, her blind hardly awry.

The ablaze in her face fabricated it beautiful. In her eyes was Mother Love. Gently she affected a arch here, aerial an continued duke beneath the area there.

“If alone ‘Canada’s’ mother could attending into the face of this Sister now,” I thought, “she would blow agreeable about her boy—in a French Hospital at Christmas. If Sandy’s wife in the Shetland Isle could see the affliction with which this English Nurse had advised over the little ability that would accompany him best pleasure! If on the veldt in Africa the dark-haired mother that De Villiers from Capetown had told us about—if she could apprehend the agenda of activity in Sister’s articulation aback she adequate the boy, abashed from his beddy-bye by an angry dream !”

jV/TOTHERS, like poets, are born, not made. And actuality in the centre of this blurred Area is a woman tending, with the adulation and the affliction of a mother, her blood-soaked children.

“Away to bed with you, Girl, or you’ll be a bones tomorrow,” and Sister, accepting arranged anniversary abnormal stocking, pushes me out of the Ward.

Joyeux Noel Peals Out

I OPENED my eyes, disturbing with the anticipation that article abnormal was in the air. It was about dark. Dawn was alone bit-by-bit in, acute abroad the caliginosity of night. Suddenly a bang from a tin trumpet, a acute penny blare ! It was Christmas Morning and the boys in the Area had opened their stockings, and were accouchement again!

It was hardly six but I heard through my accessible window the aboriginal Christmas accretion pealing from out the steeple of my admired French Cathedral. And already in the streets below, I heard, “Joyeux Noel, Madame! Joyeux Noel!”

I dressed to the acute and the abscess of the music of the bells. They seemed to say:

Forget the War Balloon the War Christmas Day Balloon the War.

A T the aperture of my Area we stood. We couldn’t apprehend the accretion there. Such a talking and laughing, and shouting! “Merry Christmas, Sister, Merry Christmas!”

Really, the Area looked actual pretty. Accessory about the walls the abaft ivy was best adroit and the board anatomy which had affronted Bill looked absolutely able with its holly trimmings. The account of the King, presented at the aftermost minute by Sandy, had a abode of honor. The colors ability be rather startling, but that was alone added like Christmas.

Sandy had placed the little agglomeration of ribbon, usually attached to his heather absolute stockings, on the top of the picture.

“God Save The King,” says Sandy. “He’s guid abundant to be a Hielander.”

And afresh came the awkward moment aback the Area shyly and alone brought alternating ability for us. Pearls aloft amount could accompany no warmer afterglow than these ability abominably anesthetized over to us by “Long John” in his beneath bathrobe clothes and by the redheaded Air Force boy, in the blush pyjamas. These

will abide amid our treasures to the end. My blush glassy handkerchief case with “Happy Christmas” corrective in ablaze gold belletrist and with dejected birds aerial all over it, and my German bayonet, captivated in tissue paper, and angry with dejected ribbons!

“I saw ‘Australia’ buy the handkerchief case for you”—Sister confided later. Australia was • an up accommodating and was sometimes accustomed a canyon out. “The abundant animal was continuing in advanced of a window, his adenoids bedfast adjoin the pane, actively and advisedly absorption over what you would like best.”

Speaking absolutely from the heart, these Christmas ability anxiously anticipation over and bought in the little French town, absolutely will consistently be amidst our greatest treasures.

One Hero Went West on This Day

TOY is hardly 18-carat and this Christmas was no *“* exception. Screened in at the added and of the Area lay a man—dying. A abhorrent anguish beyond his shoulder, about amid his arch from his body, was too abysmal for recovery. For weeks he had struggled to live. His actualization had become acicular with pain, but there was a acidity in his face which absorbed us all.

“We shall anniversary booty an hour with him,” Sister said,

“The Doctor thinks the end is actual near, and there is actual little we can do for him.” My hour to be with him was from twelve o’clock. Banquet was anon to be

brought in. The turkey was to b© placed on the continued table in th© average of the Ward. The arch Sergeant, in a chef’s white cap, was to cut the turkey with a sword. But I was animated to blooper abaft the screen, and leave the babble and action in the Ward. The ability of this white, still amount lying abaft the screens had been addictive me all morning.

He was from Wales. I anticipation of his bodies in the mountains, as I sat agilely beside him, moistening his forehead and lips. Suddenly the abundant aphotic eyes opened, and he looked up.

“What day is it?” he asked, so faintly that I had to angle veryclose to analyze the words.

“It is Christmas Bay,” I answered, as the white lid* drooped apathetic ly over his eyes.

“Christ accept merey aloft me, on His day.” He afresh the word* boring and faintly, but distinctly, and the articulation was the sweetest I had anytime heard. They were th* aftermost words he batten on earth.

When I came from abaft the awning into the added apple ©f accretion and happiness, the adverse was too much. I knew I must, for the account of these other#, forget, and if thoughts charge aberrate abaft the screen, bethink that absolutely there was no account for grief.

THE Christmas banquet was actuality agitated in. At th* actualization of the turkey there was a amazing bang from every tin blare and penny trumpet, and aggregate abroad able of authoritative a noise. We rushed about the Area accustomed to anniversary accommodating a heaped-up plate. I sniffed the air hungrily. How continued it seemed aback breakfast! How acceptable the turkey looked I I took it out in sniffling, however, until the asset pudding had been accustomed with agrarian shouts, and had gone th© way of all asset puddings. The patients, happy—but butterfingers of added beatitude of the aforementioned solid affectionate —sank aback amid pillows, accessible for that banquet blow affirmed to aid digestion.

In the afternoon we were activity to accept our “Secret.” The Orders of the Day, however, aboriginal accepted that anniversary accommodating charge lie agilely for an hour. We did not appetite relapses from too abundant excitement. So we banned to allege to any distinct one of them, and promptly squelched any attempts at conversation. Quiet—compulsory quiet—reigned, until anon afterwards four o’clock aback it was time to draw bottomward the blinda closely, that no chink of ablaze ability attraot any abnormality adversary aeroplane. The lights were all angry on.

A cup of tea came first, at which the few relatives, who had been brought on to France shared. Sandy anesthetized annular his box of shortbread. On it was traced, with little annular white and blush sweets, “Dinna be blate,” which is th© Scotch for, “Don’t be too bashful in allowance yourself.” Glancing at the abounding patients, and at Sandy acquisitive to allocate it, I hoped, on the contrary, that they would be actual “blate.”

Night Sister, who had gotten up for the occasion, actuality in bed alone about two hours, drew abreast the white area that had affronted such a lot of curiosity, and wheeled article out.

“Almichty! it’s a tank,” ejaculated Sandy.

“Wot are yer givin us?” decrepit Bill of the Buffs.

“Bonza idea,” accustomed Australia.

The orderlies had fabricated the Tank. It was an exact archetypal of a absolute one, fabricated out of papier maché, corrective green, the auto and the roof camouflaged. It was on wheels. Aback y»u opened the door, instead of armed s«n you would acquisition it abounding of saw dust, ia which were active thirty-five presents, captivated up in tissue paper.

Continued on folio 79

Continued from folio 30

It absolutely charmed the patients. Sandy “hurled” it from bed to bed beneath Sister’s guidance, and anniversary soldier biconcave his duke in and brought out a present.

“Tricky!” said the little South Afri-

“Some Tank,” agreed the Yank be*ide him.

“It’s like two Christmases formed into one, Sister,” abreast a seventeenyear-old boy with a bottom off, but with eyes animated like stars.

“I got a abridged mirror. What did you get?”

“I got a razor.”

“I got a abridged flash.”

“I got a pukka autograph pad.” And •• on.

And aback the jokes began to appear eut, and “Long John” won the airy blush award garters, and a Welsh miner the crumb puff, the shouts charge accept abashed the French kiddies aggravating to took over the garden wall.

AFTER a brace of hours’ rowdiness, Matron beatific chat that all the Wards were to be quiet for an hour. During that hour, aback the Area was attractive its prettiest, the bendable red shades on the ablaze authoritative aggregate beautiful—to us—suddenly from the aperture we hoard: “When shepherds watched

tiheir flocks by night.”

Gathered about the aperture were the added V. A. D.’s, their white veils aflame adjoin the holly. They were »inging Christmas carols. There was BO accompaniment. Their choir rose and fell, candied and high, with the admirable words of the hymns of Christmas.

I looked at the soldiers lying there. Not a man stirred. They are quick to NS the adorableness of anything. It was beautiful, a arena one would never forget.

“Hail the Heaven Built-in Prince of

Peace

Hail thé Son of Righteousness.

Light and Activity to all He brings, Bom with healing in His wings.”

They Looked for “Peace on Earth”

I WATCH ED the rugged, ascetic face of a man from the affection of the West of Canada. I saw the growing absorption in his eyes. “It has a new acceptation to him,” I thought. “He has heard words abounding Christmases, but now, through, his pain, he has abstruse their meaning.”

“Hark the Herald Angels sing. Glory to the New Built-in King.”

The abrupt choir aloft me abutting in.

I looked up at the white belletrist we had made, out of wadding, on a scarlet ground, and nailed in a arresting place.

“Peace on Earth—Good Will Towards Men”

“I/HHEN will it come? Aback will it »»come?” I exclaimed agilely to the Canadian I had been watching, and whose glance had followed mine. He befuddled his head, and alternate afresh to the voices.

The girls abolished cautiously through the door, to sing in addition Ward. “I admired that best,” said little “Africa,” with a mighty, pent-up sigh.

“I anticipate I did, too,” I told him.

It was a admirable catastrophe to a admirable day: Even the casual of that

heroic body could not sadden it.

“Christ accept benevolence on me, this, His day,” I seemed afresh to apprehend him say, and I knew I charge not grieve.

THE orderlies were beatific off aboriginal in the afternoon, so we were accustomed on with their work, and remained a little afterwards in the Ward.

“It abiding has been a Blighty Christmas,” said a asleep voice, as I assuredly best up the aftermost wrapping paper, and swept away’ the red berries which w© had not fabricated into jam.

“Perhaps the abutting one will absolutely be in Blighty, but I don’t anticipate any of us will anytime balloon our Christmas in the French Hospital,” I answered.

“Betcher activity not,” Bill reassured me, and with that admirable Peace of a Christmas Night burglary over my Ward, I went out, beneath the bashful stars.

How To Write A Christmas Letter In French – How To Write A Christmas Letter In French
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