The hanky quilt mom never got to make

My mother said after publishing her book on hankies that she wouldn't do another hanky quilt - but she did.

She knew all about about my forthcoming penicillin book.

 I had told her how that during Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound in late April -  early May 1945, new Amsterdam-made (Pfizer) penicillin was supposedly dropped (unofficially) to the dying Dutch in old Amsterdam.

This story has been widely doubted by most historians, because the Allied-German Truce rules were that only food parcels were to be dropped and quite literally dropped - dropped without a parachute.

This was so that the German occupiers would not mistake them for an incoming paratrooper invasion force.

Often even heavily built food parcels in strong tin cans broke up on impact, so historians asked how on earth could penicillin survive in its normal delicate glass vials?

I had always believed it could have survived ---- if it had been emptied out into a tiny tin screw-topped bottle and wrapped inside a lot of strong padding.

What I had missed, while my mother was still alive, was the very sensible explanation that many, many bomber crews gave for how the Dutch children below got the airmen's personal sweets rations without the candy breaking up.

The airmen took their own personal - and omnipresent - hankies and made them into mini parachutes to gently lower the candies to the ground !

This is almost certainly how the widely reported 'airborne vial of penicillin' (later picked up by a Dutch doctor) arrived.

The Dutch in western (urban) Netherlands were not just 'starving' by that point in the war - they were well past that - the very old, very young and the very weak were now dying by the thousands every week.

Any normally minor infection could spell death because of their weakened state.

Food helped their recovery, but to prevent death in the short term, if sulfa didn't work, only penicillin could save them.

Presumably Dawson-hearted medical personnel at the Allied airforce bases realized this, even if their commanding generals didn't, and stole government issue penicillin to give (unofficially) to the Dutch.

Dr Dawson's physical body had died 24 hours before the first plane, the Canadian-crewed BAD PENNY, took off on this life-saving Manna mission.

 But his spirit definitely lived on and I am sure it was aboard those Manna planes - and taking a ride down on those little hanky parachutes !

Since my mom isn't here to make this hanky story quilt, maybe I will have to....