"We ministers are not always called to burials of air raid victims," he wrote.

Air raid victims, too, from Cologne and Koblenz, were temporarily housed in Breitenthal, particularly at the end of the war.

Unusually, "Cheadle is one of the few villages which named its air raid victims on the war memorial located in Cheadle Village."

Ruth follows its progress right to the dinner tables of a British Restaurant (or emergency food centre), as she serves the boiled pork, alongside boiled onions, baked beans and plum duff, for local air raid victims and evacuees.

A mass grave for 2,099 victims of aerial bombardment during World War II has been converted to form a "grove of honour for air raid victims" (Ehrenhain für Luftkriegsopfer), with a monument by Hans Wimmer.