We want to make potato-cakes to go with the roast.
But we cannot find a grater for the potatoes.
However, that difficulty is soon got over. With a nail we punch a lot of holes in a pot lid and there we have a grater.
Three fellows put on thick gloves to protect their fingers against the grater, two others peel the potatoes, and the business gets going.
Kat takes charge of the sucking pigs, the carrots, the peas, and the cauliflower.
He even mixes a white sauce for the cauliflower.
I fry the pancakes, four at a time.
After ten minutes I get the knack of tossing the pan so that the pancakes which are done on one side sail up, turn in the air and are caught again as they come down.
The sucking pigs are roasted whole.
We all stand round them as before an altar.
In the meantime we receive visitors, a couple of wireless-men, who are generously invited to the feed.
They sit in the living-room where there is a piano.
One of them plays, the other sings
"An der Weser."
He sings feelingly, but with a rather Saxon accent.
All the same it moves us as we stand at the fireplace preparing the good things.
Then we begin to realize we are in for trouble.
The observation balloons have spotted the smoke from our chimney, and the shells start to drop on us.
They are those damned spraying little daisy-cutters that make only a small hole and scatter widely close to the ground.
They keep dropping closer and closer all round us; still we cannot leave the grub in the lurch.
A couple of splinters whizz through the top of the kitchen window.
The roast is ready.
But frying the pancakes is getting difficult.
The explosions come so fast that the splinters strike again and again against the wall of the house and sweep in through the window.
Whenever I hear a shell coming I drop down on one knee with the pan and the pancakes, and duck behind the wall of the window.
Immediately afterwards I am up again and going on with the frying.
The Saxon stops singing—a fragment has smashed the piano.
At last everything is ready and we organize the transport of it back to the dugout.
After the next explosion two men dash across the fifty yards to the dug-out with the pots of vegetables.
We see them disappear.
The next shot.
Everyone ducks and then two more trot off, each with a big can of finest grade coffee, and reach the dug-out before the next explosion.
Then Kat and Kropp seize the masterpiece—the big dish with the brown, roasted sucking pigs.
A screech, a knee bend, and away they race over the fifty yards of open country.
I stay to finish my last four pancakes; twice I have to drop to the floor;—after all, it means four pancakes more, and they are my favourite dish.
Then I grab the plate with the great pile of cakes and squeeze myself behind the house door.
A hiss, a crash, and I gallop off with the plate clamped against my chest with both hands.
I am almost in, there is a rising screech, I bound, I run like a deer, sweep round the wall, fragments clatter against the concrete, I tumble down the cellar steps, my elbows are skinned, but I have not lost a single pancake, nor even upset the plate.
At two o'clock we start the meal.
It lasts till six.
We drink coffee until half-past six—officer's coffee from the supply dump—and smoke officer's cigars and cigarettes—also from the supply dump. Punctually at half-past six we begin supper.
At ten o'clock we throw the bones of the sucking pigs outside the door.
Then there is cognac and rum— also from the blessed supply dump—and once again long, fat cigars with bellybands.
Tjaden says that it lacks only one thing: Girls from an officer's brothel.
Late in the evening we hear mewing.
A little grey cat sits in the entrance.
We entice it in and give it something to eat.
And that wakes up our own appetites once more.
Still chewing, we lie down to sleep.
But the night is bad.