Writer: Ultan Pringle. Performer: Clelia Murphy. Run time: 16.09 mins.
“I show up. And sure, why wouldn’t I show up?”
Aisling has stepped outside the back door, brick and window to her back, earphones in. This is a private monologue. Earlier in the day she was in the café at the National Gallery, nervous and contemplative as she was waiting for a date. To pass the time she started to think back: to how she got to where she is, her ex-husband Craig, her two children, the jobs she’s had, but mostly about her new adventure. She is a mature student at Trinity and relishing the chance to learn. Studying classics is something that she thought she would never be able to do, and she is quietly thrilled. Alongside this there is an excellent line about dating feeling “like a cow being wheeled out in front of the butcher”, which expertly and pithily captures the feeling of moving from app to real life, whatever age one is. Aisling’s date, the Italian Marianne, who looks like she doesn’t eat cake and has slight coffee stains on her teeth, shows up and the waiting was worth it. The rest of Toffee focuses on the date and the moments after.
There are hints scattered throughout that life hasn’t always been kind. She sometimes doubts herself and is aware of how different her background is to those of most of the other students. Toffee was first screened at around the same time as the tv adaptation of Normal People, both of which touch on the relationship between studying at Trinity while having little money and not coming from a well-off background. Aisling is 47, divorced, has children, knows what a privilege education is and perhaps because of the fact she had thought this life would never be available to her, she is devouring every minute of her course.
In quite a short space we really get to know Aisling and so much about her. She is an endearing character that is fully fleshed out in just a few minutes, which says a lot about Pringle’s writing. Hearing directly from her, the thoughts that she hasn’t expressed elsewhere, we gain a great insight into her character. The monologue format here is a little like being able to read through her texts; personal and direct. The title matches the character and feeling of the piece well. There is something quietly lovely about Toffee and Murphy was the perfect person for this role.
Aisling leaves the date with butterflies, with hope and excitement deep in her belly. As she looks around and smiles at a stranger, one can’t help but smile along too.
Writer: Stewart Roche. Performer: Neill Flemming. Run time: 17.02 minutes.
“Once you’ve seen the mask slip from society, there’s no going back.”
Our narrator is sat in a chair facing the camera head on. He is probably in his forties and looks a little tired and worn. His face and hands are grubby and there are dark shadows under his eyes. In the first few lines our narrator tells us “you know about the commune, right?”. And he begins to talk. To who we are not exactly sure but the possibilities become clearer as it goes on.
The narrative jumps back in time. Witnessing the desperate, selfish, somewhat ridiculous rush for bread and milk during the Beast from the East in 2018 triggered something in him. The everyday annoyances, troubles, the lies people tell, that had long existed inside him surfaced in a bubble of disaffection and frustration. After this he started to look for something. What? Who knows what they are looking for? He spent some time becoming a keyboard warrior before he made a connection that saw him move to a commune on the uninhabited Dawlish island off the coast of Mayo. This wasn’t just any island. In the seventies it had been gifted by John Lennon to the king of the hippies. Their commune failed but a group had recently formed that believed that it could be different. This sets in process a chain of events that are shocking, tense and unexpected.
The narrative has been very well written. Roche has done well at showing how a chain of seemingly unconnected events over several years can lead a man to make a decision which would often be seen by others as strange at best and potentially dangerous or lunatic at worst. Flemming was a great choice to embody this character. His facial expression, ticks, mannerisms, the way he eats his biscuit all go toward capturing the characters internal journey. There is an excellent use of foreshadowing at the beginning; images of blood lust, people tearing each other apart and survival come back full force. In his new path in life our narrator eventually finds a type of beautiful purity, a happiness. This also alludes to our own time as many feel the rootlessness and desire for answers and security that the narrator eventually finds. In working towards our own well being will mankind tear each other apart in a bid to be the first to an answer, to a vaccine, to be seen as in charge?
The denouement is somewhat chilling. The man at the beginning is no longer the person sat in front of us at the end. It is testament to Roche’s writing and Flemming’s performance that they take us on this journey without letting the story slip for a moment. Shard is an absorbing story that reminds how enjoyable good story telling can be.
Writer: Jack Harte. Performer: Gerard Lee. Running time: 15.11 mins.
“No more hope after tonight. New regulations. The pub has to close.”
The pub has closed, and one gets the feeling that for our narrator this is far more disruptive to his life than the pandemic working its way around the globe. Many people feel the same. It was a sad day when Temple Bar effectively closed but for many it was the small local pubs shutting their doors that have had the biggest impact. Although out narrator is not here to ponder the economic and social ramifications of a long-term lockdown. No. Instead he is thinking about his story.
With a slight weariness tinged with frustration he begins to talk to us. Sat in a corner at home, crossword in hand, scotch glass beside him (although from the looks of it, not full to the brim with the finest whisky but something cheaper and weaker), he tells the story about his pub and the people he meets there. There are a group of men who share a table. Collectively known as ‘the club’, they know each other not by name but by their tag: ‘the teacher’, ‘the writer’, ‘the young lad’, and perhaps most importantly ‘himself’. ‘Himself’ is erratic in his attendance but he is the most anticipated. He is a raconteur who can keep the club laughing with his musings. Then one night he walks in holding a strange piece of equipment and with a thesis in his head. Whether he knew that this was going to trigger a series of events that would gradually build and build in comedy is doubtful, but that is what happened.
With the absence of the pub table we become the narrator’s audience, leaning in to catch every detail and waiting for the next turn in the tale. This was a good way of approaching the production as it draws the audience in and treats them almost as though they are a part of the club. Although in a theatre the laughter would roll and gather, carrying the narrative forward, The Pleasureometer still works in this format, raising a laugh and creating a sense of familiarity. Harte plotted out the key points well to ensure that The Pleasureometer would be as in place in the local pub as one screen. Professionally delivered by Gerard Lee who carries the characters slight air of grumpiness and his stifled mirth and glee that carrying this story inside of him has given. The story within a story and the creation of their own audience are excellent dramatic tricks that work well in this format.
By the end of the 15 minutes you will know what the Pleasureometer is (aside from an excellent title) and can decide how much pleasure it is going to give today.
As early as April The New Theatre set out to prove that even a global pandemic will not stop new theatre from being created and enjoyed. Twelve short monologues were written and performed from the 7th to the 24th and are now available to view on takeyourseats.ie. Free to watch, the creators are hoping for donations to help them through this unprecedented time. Although watching on a screen does not have the same atmosphere as sitting in a theatre it is great that even during a time like this that there is a space for creativity. Also, for someone like myself who has often been prevented from theatre going by illness, if gives one the chance to still enjoy new productions.
Week One – One: An Unmade Bed
Writer: Elizabeth Moynihan. Performer: Laoisa Sexton. Run time: 11.19 minutes.
“Will you come back? You did before.”
A breathy voice informs us that the speaker is alone in her bed and we learn quickly enough that the bed has become her world. Her partner has left, even though Ireland is in lockdown, and she has fevered thoughts of going to find him in London. Why did he go? How can he be safe? Clouds gather outside the window and rain begins to fall.
After this introduction the speaker circles back to the heart of her relationship with the unnamed man. Their relationship seems to have been marked by arguments and promises to change. The more she wanted to be with him the more he wanted to get drunk, get high, take life as it comes. Frustrated and increasingly desperate they argue. Her anger and disgust increases, but her longing does not subside. The monologue takes us back to the start of their relationship and its key points before it broke down irretrievably. As with many relationships it is difficult to see from the outside what held them together and their separation is less surprising to the audience than to the speaker.
Moynihan makes great use of metaphor. The unmade bed becomes a boat lost at sea and surrounded by sharks. She wonders why mackerel do not avoid sharks (“haven’t they learnt anything by now”), why the prey walks into the mouth of a predator. The breathy voice continues for the rest of the piece which probably wasn’t necessary however as we quickly see how hurt she has been by his leaving and how her internal aloneness is echoed by the outside world.
These feelings are matched by the camera work and subdued colour palette; white, browns and grey. As the weather changes the bed becomes a boat, the rumpled sheets reflecting the ocean waves, her hair splayed out like foam on the beach. The cinematography perfectly complements the monologue. It would be good to know who was responsible for filming so that they could be properly credited.
The fact that the pandemic is mentioned early on is similar to many of the other productions. Perhaps even in theatre there is little hiding space and the audience must join the speaker in her bed and wait for the sharks to search elsewhere for food.
It is difficult to find someone who has not heard of Jack the Ripper, however far fewer people have heard of Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine (Kate) Eddowes and Mary Jane (Marie Jeanette) Kelly. These are the names of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper, and The Five is their history.
Historian Rubenhold managed to work out something that has bypassed most of us and that is how little is known about the women murdered by the infamous Jack the Ripper. But not only that, how little time and thought has even gone into understanding the lives of these women. History has known them only for their deaths. This book sets out to shine a light on their life stories and restore their dignity. Rubenhold does a remarkably good job at achieving this.
The book is broken down into five key sections; giving space to investigate the life of each of the five. Aside from being an interesting micro history of each person, the book also tackles the ‘fact’ that they were all prostitutes. This was effectively decided upon in 1888 when the newspapers latched on to the more ‘salacious’ details of their lives in order to shift papers. At the time the lines between sex work, coupling up for preservation, and full – time prostitution were so blurred as to be invisible. This was compounded by the fact that homeless women were looked down upon and assumed to be ‘fallen’ or ‘broken’ in some way. In 1887 the Metropolitan police force had been embarrassed when mistakenly arresting a woman for being a prostitute.
“Sir Charles Warrens order of the 19th July 1887 was issued in an attempt to make an official clarification on how the police were to formally define a prostitute. It was stated that “the police constable should not assume that any particular woman is a common prostitute and that the police were not justified in calling any woman a common prostitute unless she so describes herself, or has been convicted as such”.”
I found Kate and Marie Jeanette particularly compelling. Partly because Kate comes from the midlands like I do but also because of her restlessness and desire not to fall into the inevitable path of constant work, childbirth, lack of money and eventually death. She met Tom Conway; soldier, raconteur, chap book writer and seller, and he offered the promise of a different life. They travelled together selling chap books and making up their own songs and stories. Eventually however they fell into poverty and their partnership became strained under the weight of providing for their children, her alcoholism and his violence. It is remarkable how much about her life can be established from surviving records. It is often thought that as most people did not leave behind written sources that little can be known about them, however Rubenhold’s forensic research has given us the bones of Kate’s life that can then be shaded in by what else is known about the lives of women at the time.
Marie Jeanette is the one who the least is known about. At some point in her life she decided to separate herself from the place she came from and forged herself anew in London where she became a sex worker. She told some that she was from Ireland and others that she was from Wales. Her accents, interests, mannerisms and so on suggest that she had a better off start in life than most of her compatriots, so it is not surprising that she wished to keep her past to herself. Only 25 when she died, she had worked in a high – class brothel before being trafficked to the continent. She escaped and found her way back to London where she began working in Whitechapel. It would be fascinating to know more about her but after so many years it is doubtful whether more will be known than in presented here. The Five details all we know and we now have a good source for information about her life, rather than just her death.
The Five made a splash upon publication. Largely because it’s emergence suddenly made it clear how much of Ripper mythology has bypassed the actual lives of the women, but also because so many ‘ripperologists’ became so angry with Rubenhold and the media surrounding the books publication. Although the lives of the women have been written about before, The Five offers the most clear and extensive history to date that focuses on their actual lives rather than how their lives led them to their ultimate fate. It is excellently and diligently researched. This leaves one again wishing that there is a way to access the references with audiobooks. This is a book that is suitable for the historian and casual reader (or listener) alike. One other highlight is the insight it gives into the social conditions of late nineteenth century Whitechapel; a warren of tiny alleyways, cramped, dilapidated accommodation, often the last chance saloon for the down and out, full of alcoholism, darkness and also teeming with life. The Five was recommended to me by a friend and I have no hesitation in recommending it to others.
Fresh, focused and full of information and detail The Five is an important, vital and engaging history read.
Hallie Rubenhold The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
How to be Famous by Caitlin Moran is an enjoyable romp through Britpop London seen through the eyes of fearless music journalist Dolly Wilde.
Dolly’s move from Wolverhampton is complete and she is determined to embrace the new world of music, sex and friendship that is now outside her front door. This is the pre – internet London; full of drizzle, pints, cigarettes in restaurants and blistering gigs in tiny venues. This is also the London that was once a magnet for working class creatives who came together and made great art out the melting pot of the city’s influences. Dolly’s family, who featured prominently in preceding novel How to Build a Girl, pop up with joyful regularity, and are offset by a new cast of characters from best friend and guitar wielding feminist whirlwind Suzanne Banks, to indie record label exec Zee. For those hoping for a love story John Kite also re-emerges, but Moran doesn’t follow the traditional route of having Dolly pine at home for him while he is off conquering the music world. At heart How to be Famous is a love letter to fans and to the teenage girls that invest themselves in their musical heroes
Anyone who has read some of Moran’s journalism will recognise her in these pages and at the end there is a slight feeling of using fiction to right past wrongs while bringing a modern feminist light to bear on the past. Although perfectly good, it is unlikely that it would have been published if authored by anyone else, and if Moran has indeed set out to mimic Dickens in bringing social politics into people’s homes via the medium of fiction, she hasn’t quite managed to reach this goal with How to be Famous.
Moran is improving as a fiction writer book by book and her fans will not be disappointed by this latest offering. How to be Famous is an easy, bouncy read that takes the reader on an enjoyable romp through love, friendship, music and self – invention.
Accessibility: Very good. Seats on the front row removed to fit wheelchairs. Can access the building without ramps and toilet facilities on the ground floor.
The Crowman is a well formed, excellently plotted and timed play full of emotion that reaches out from the stage and into the audience. At times you feel loneliness hollowing your insides and at others you feel the quiet joy and beauty that Dan finds warming you up. The fact that Jon Kenny can do this is testament to his acting prowess. A one man show he holds the audience every moment and embodies a character journeying away from fear and a life alone. Full of hilarious vignettes of village life, Kennny plays other villagers, twisting his body and voice, with aplomb. When a death announcement splinters his world, Dan must chart a new way through life. This is a play that should definitely be seen.
Walking in to the Boys School at Smock Alley feels just like walking into The Last Corner Shop on Misery Hill. Run by chalk and cheese brothers Mick and Joe O’Reilly they spend their days obsessing over missing money and missing socks. They are trying to withstand the tide of supermarkets and online shopping without much success. The staging has been excellently and carefully designed to look like all corner shops; nostalgia and curiosity jumbled together. A second glance at the very unusual selection of items on offer gives the audience a clue as to why this is misery hill; eggs for 8 euro next to 100 euro for a used, plain white T – shirt that was once worn by an under 21 footballer. Unsurprisingly the shoppers are not flocking to their store. The brothers are joined by friends Deana and Johno as they stagger through their day finding humour where they cannot find money. In their current situation, how long before they have to give in to their arch enemy: Dunnes (try and imagine the name Dunnes uttered in an over the top panto voice to signal doom and the enemy). How is a corner shop to survive in the modern world?
Joe (Barry John Kinsella) likes to start the day with his tunes. It sets him off on the right note as he dances around the shop with a broom. It’s a fun start to the day. George Benison’s Give Me The Night is bouncy and infectious. It sets the pace and at first the play kept up; with comedy wrapped around sharp social observations. The was developed upon by the introduction of Deana (Eimear Keating). A firecracker of a character full of energy and bite, it is difficult to see why she stays friends with them but her presence on stage is full of entertainment. Then, in walks Johno (Colm Lennon). A down and out he is a friend of sorts. The kind that you are stuck with from childhood and never manage to separate yourself from. He is prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy that are used to (ever diminishing) comedic effect.
Most of the play felt a bit grimy. Johno started off being funny, but his speeches continued to the point of almost pain. At the end there is a sudden emotional revelation. I say sudden because it came from absolutely nowhere, no lead up at all. There were moments earlier in the play that were supposed to act as breadcrumbs, but they were not fully formed enough to pave the way for the ending. The audience were left looking around wondering what had happened. There is much else throughout the play that goes unanswered. Story lines and plot points are started and then forgotten about. There is one plotline that dovetails through the production well. That of the mad old bat of a customer Mary (Denise O’Connor). Her transformation at the end fits and her explanation for the absurdity going on makes sense in the context of misery hill. If the final scene with Johno, can be worked back to flow so well from beginning to end then the script will soon come up to the great standard of acting on display. Keating had a particularly great roll to get into. Comedy, brutality, the voice of reason and justice all rolled into one, she without doubt had some of the most entertaining and enjoyable scenes. Lennon plays the part of homeless raconteur well and brings out the best in the others, including Kinsella’s Joe. And of course, none of this would work without the ‘straight’ man of the group, Owen O’Gorman’s long suffering older brother Mick, who acts as an excellent foil for the others and provides the anchor around which the production revolves.
There is a strain of Irish comedy that is very black, and this is an example of a production that veers too much away from comedy and into the black. The last few scenes in The Last Corner Shop have a brilliant twist and are surreal and wonderfully done. The Last Corner Shop is rough, rude and a little too long. It has the bones of a great play here, with key plot points, characters and vignettes. The middle needs to be worked on and the main through points sharpened so the audience can get involved with the action unfolding around them. Hopefully Last Corner Shop will be revisited in the future and buffed up into a diamond.
Director: Mack Mirahmadi
Writer: Ciaran Gallagher & Mack Mirahmadi
Cast: Barry John Kinsella, Colm Lennon, Denise O’Connor, Eimear Keating, Owen O’Gorman
N.B. Interesting fact: there used to be a misery hill in Dublin 1.
N.B. Happy fact: I went home singing Benison’s Give Me The Night but was going mad when I couldn’t remember the name of the song or find it on youtube. Polliwog Theatre Company kindly responded to my facebook message and told me the name of the song.
Ireland is going through a golden age of writing: that has never been more apparent. I wanted to capture something of the energy of this explosion, in all its variousness… [Lucy Caldwell]
When picking up a collection of short stories, many will choose to do the same as I did and seek out their favourite writers. This is how I came to read Jan Carson’s Pillars first. Carson, a writer from Northern Ireland, has been fusing magical realism with day to day life to great success in her early works and is well known for her short stories. So, it was with anticipation that I started to read. Pillars focuses on 47 year old Louise. “On Monday she simply wakes to find the pillar floating at the end of her bed.” This is most unusual because she hasn’t ordered one. It will go on to stay with her day and night, changing colour and size as the situation demands. Carson uses this to take a piercing look a mental health, or more specifically the way in which we often try to ignore difficulties and do not know how to acknowledge them in others. It is a gentle and ultimately uplifting story that makes one question why we so often refuse to accept the obvious.
Being Various is the sixth volume in Faber’s long running series of new Irish short stories. It has been brought together under the editorship of accomplished short story writer Lucy Caldwell (although she does not offer up a story which is perhaps a shame). She commissioned new works from a variety of writers, ranging from the well-established to relative newcomers. The nature of what it means to be an Irish writer is tackled head on with the introduction stating that each writer is “Irish by birth, by parentage, or residence”. “Irish” referring to the island of Ireland. Further, each writer had their first work published after the Good Friday Agreement. This makes Being Various a particularly diverse and interesting volume but also helps to highlight some of the great talent that has been emerging from Northern Ireland in the past two decades.
Wings, by David Hayden, a story of a family ruled by the unpredictable violence of the father, is spare, darkly beautiful and devastating. It’s told from the perspective of a young boy, Martin, whose every footstep is tightly controlled and monitored. Every moment is full of fear; “there was no knowing. Everything was quiet” until the “thumping on the stairs”. Hayden avoids falling into the trap of making Wings sound too much like a misery memoir or list of abuses, with his delicate prose and way of zooming out at times of horror – as our protagonist does also – making the wrongness of the situation all the more apparent. As the story comes to a close Hayden subverts expectations with the last few paragraphs which are a strange mix of terrifying and beautiful. Wings echoes in the reader’s mind long after turning the page.
“I saw you. I saw you. I got you by the shirt. I stopped you walking into the road.” Eimear McBride best known for her award winning A Girl Is a Half Formed Thing, offers up The Adminicle Exists. This is a particularly interesting piece as it chronicles the journey of a woman taking her partner to hospital as he experiences a mental health crisis. Her role is fixed as his partner and protector, so much so that her real thoughts are trapped inside and no one notices her pain. The writing is broken across the page, in short sharp sentences and split in two halves, reflecting the way in which the protagonist’s life, and mind, has splintered. This somehow strengthens its impact and one finds oneself turning back to the start to begin again (as indeed does our protagonist as she knows this event will be repeated). An ‘adminicle’ is defined as ‘corroborative or explanatory proof’, and as the title tells us this proof exists. But the question becomes can others see it as she sometimes screams, sometimes whispers inside, “I wonder if you’ll kill me tonight?”.
Sally Rooney has shot to international acclaim with her first two novels, but before this she was making a name for herself as a short story writer, with Mr Salary (2016) being shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG short story award. Her offering here is called Colour and Light. Aidan is being picked up by his brother when he first meets Pauline. She is enigmatic, worldly and always slightly out of reach. In town for an arts festival she keeps running into Aidan and her brother; each time making him wonder more about who she is. Although little in the way of action happens as these two cross paths, Colour and Light shows how close we can be to someone – a brother or partner – and yet also not really know them at all. One also gets the impression of emotional sadness running through Pauline which is highlighted by Rooney’s pared back and emotionally acute writing style. Unsurprisingly as the story ended, I found myself wanting to know more about the characters and inventing further backstory for them in my head.
So how does Being Various fit together as a collection? Although impossible to sum up and evaluate each of the twenty four stories in a short review, it is pleasant to be able to dip in and out of a collection and find oneself confronted with skill and intrigue on each page. Although identity is a political hot topic, as touched upon in the introduction, remarkably few writers choose to directly investigate national identity here. Instead this is more done by the very inclusion of such a diverse group of writers. I hope the selection of stories mentioned above give a good idea of the power of each story and how enjoyable this collection is to read. If one wants to start at page one and read each story in order, the collection flows well and has been edited to fit together well. There is a good mix of light and darkness (thankfully, as Irish art has a well-deserved reputation for darkness, there are rays of light radiating through) and each story offers something new and exciting.
Lucy Caldwell (ed.), Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber, 2019). 978-0571342501, 354pp., paperback.
We are told that sweets and chocolates are bad for us, and should be eaten in small amounts, if at all. However, during a terrifying wartime winter, a delivery of Tootsie Rolls proved to be a lifesaver.
Tootsie Rolls are bite-size chocolate covered toffee treats. Those not from America may be familiar with the name from the 90s dance craze. These unassuming sweets have an interesting history, specifically the role they played in the Korean War, when they were credited with saving the lives of American Marines.
So how did this strange happening occur?
By November 1950 the Korean war was well underway when the People’s Volunteer Army of China entered the conflict. Coming via the north-eastern Chinese-Korean border on 27th of November, this development took US forces by surprise.
US Marines, under the command of General Edward Almond, were based in the Chosin Resevoir Area. Accompanied by UN troops, the total number of allied troops was approximately 30,000. They were soon surrounded and outnumbered by 120,000 Chinese soldiers, under the command of Song Shilu. The UN troops broke free and withdrew to Hungnam, inflicting heavy casualties on the more numerous but less well equipped and trained Chinese. This left the US Marines who were facing freezing temperatures and rough terrain as they sought to make their escape.
As the temperature hit -38°C the ground froze, roads became iced over, and crucially technology and weapons began to malfunction in these extreme temperatures. One side effect of this was that the tank fuel pipes froze over, cracking open in some places; making the US’s position more perilous. At the same time, they ran low on mortar rounds. With the situation looking dire they made a request for more mortar shells. A wait ensued as anti-aircraft equipment had been entrenched on the enemy side.
It was common at the time to use code words when making requests. Mortar rounds were code named ‘Tootsie Rolls’. After the request went through the troops waited until the US were able to make air drops. It was then that they found… Tootsie Rolls.
Actual Tootsie Roll sweets. And not the much sought-after mortar rounds.
This should have been a disaster, but some quick thinking and ingenuity saved the day. The tootsie rolls were solid lumps of chocolate toffee when they landed. The Marines soon discovered that they would melt in the mouth. If they were careful, they could soften up the sweets and put them to good use. Turning them into a sort of putty the softened tootsie rolls were then applied to the fuel pipes; acting as a seal. Surprisingly, this worked. It was so cold that the sweets then solidified around the pipes, resealing them.
With the tanks up and running again the Marines were able to attempt their escape. They took heavy causalities but made it out of the Chosin River Area. Those that survived, in part thanks to Tootsie Rolls, nicknamed themselves ‘The Chosin Few’.
This was not the first time that tootsie rolls had proved useful. They played a small part in the Second World War too. They were included in ration packs as a durable treat that would withstand all weather traditions. A fitting use for an all-American sweet.
lauramarriottwriting 