Hot Chocolate- day 16
It was the Christmas of 1917 and Timothy Latimer was going back home for his first Christmas holiday away from the front line. The terrain the train was going through was still only a barren landscape ridden with fallen trees, bomb craters and discarded vehicles, but for Timothy it was one of the best scenes he had seen in a long while. Just a channel away was England and he was going home for Christmas. He blew on his cold hands and rubbed them in his ragged uniform. The times were hard and the country couldn't spend money on heating the trains so they were freezing. But he didn't mind when the frosty landscape was replaced with outlines of the station and the port.
He took his bag and started towards the coach door. The traveling was tedious, long and cold, with all that interchanges from train to train and now ferry, but he knew it was worth it. He went through it thinking about the nice bath and nice clean warm clothes he would have. But the most of all that warmed his thoughts and heart was the memory of the mug of hot chocolate that would be placed into his frozen hands by Matron Redfren. She had taken to always do this when he would go back home in England. The other three times were when he was wounded and couldn't be useful on the front line. She would make him that nice hot chocolate of hers that would warm his very soul as well as his body.
Times were hard there too, and not many people could afford the luxury of hot chocolate. Timothy wasn't sure that even Matron Redfren could but she somehow seemed to always have some in store especially for him. He sighed and looked through the frosted window. What could he could give now just for one sip of that chocolate.