Welsh Journals

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Welsh "Oat-Cakes" from the Skies! By JOHN PENNANT A CURIOUS story was going round the farms and cottages in the hills above our valley. It made some people laugh, but others took it seriously and were mystified. The story was that British airmen were dropping oat-cakes in enemy territory At the local inn, the post-office, and other places where our wiseacres tarry' and hammer out world-war strategy, controversy raged for many weeks. Sheer bunk! was the comment of the hard facts school on this story. Another section of opinion was more cautious. Granted, it seemed strange, when food wasn't too plentiful here, to shower manna instead of bombs on the enemy. But no doubt there was some subtle purpose behind all this. We had dropped millions of leaflets, hadn't we, although paper was short. Perhaps it was a clever way of feeding our friends who were being slowly starved by Hitler. Of course, it was possible that the Germans would grab the oat-cakes as they grabbed everything. And we were dropping oat-cakes over Germany as well as Italy and France and other occupied countries, were we ? Well, you never knew what that cute Churchill was up to Possibly, it was a cunning new propaganda move. Telling the Germans, perhaps Surrender now and you'll have oat-cakes for tea. There are plenty more where these came from! Naturally the positivist school made the story their own. Oat-cakes were being dropped, no maybe or perhaps about it. They were Welsh oatcakes A friend of their friends had seen them being packed hot out of the oven into neat packages at a secret factory in the hills. They were incendiary Oat-Cakes Our local Sherlock Holmes was determined to get to the bottom of the story. Where had it originated? It was said that So-and-so had actually heard it on the wireless and in the news at that. When So-and-so was approached he or she hedged-they had not actually heard it themselves, but they had heard that Such-and-such a person had heard it. These set-backs would have damped the zeal of anyone less deter- mined than our Sherlock, but he pursued his listener research to the bitter end. His reputation as a knowing fellow was at stake, and in any case he had bet a formidable Friday night round of drinks at the local that he would solve the mystery.