Paddington and the Christmas Surprise

The buckshot missed him, but also the hare. Afterwards I am more scared by what happened than either of them. That would have been a Christmas surprise indeed. Another confirmation of the truth of our old Stuka maxim: БЂњNothing comes off-except what you have practiced.БЂ«The following morning we have at last good flying weather. Ivan is early abroad; he raids our airfield. Again their bombing is pitifully bad, it is a disgrace. Their low level attacks stop at 1200 feet; we suffer practically no damage. We are out the whole of the second holiday to relieve the ground forces up in the N.E. on the River Gran and on the rest of the Budapest front. Our peaceful Christmas mood has been dispelled. The rigors of war envelope us again, the quiet cheerfulness of the peace of Christmas Eve has passed into the limbo of yesterday. Fierce battles are raging in the air and on the ground. On our side fresh reinforcements have been thrown in, all old acquaintances of mineБЂ”friends from the Eastern Front, tank-men who, like ourselves, are the High CommandБЂ™s БЂњfire brigade.БЂ«Their task and ours will be to БЂњpunch a way outБЂ«for those parts of our divisions which are trapped in Budapest, to open a lane for them to rejoin the rest of the army ...»