I'll Be Home for Christmas: The Spirit of Christmas During World War II Hardcover - 2006

Excerpt

War and Christmas--always they seem incongruous.  In celebrating "Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men" amid the horror and organized slaughter, symbols and images clash.  The carols and decorations, the gifts and religious ceremony, the trees and parties--all of it, at wartime, plays against a backdrop of ear, against the reality of battle plans and bodies.  and yet, it is in these times that Christmas takes on an urgent, immediate need.  In these times, the complex human issues of mortality, of family, and of brotherhood are stark and real.

It was especially this way during World War II.  Across the United States, the people coped.  They shopped; they planned holiday gatherings; they sent cards.  They shared universal feelings of community and fellowship, of renewal and hope.  But the tension was palpable, the nation stunned by death and destruction, by immense uncertainty and stories of horrors in far-removed places.  Where, after all, were Corregidor and Bataan and Bastogne?

And on the battlefields, thousands of young men and women who had, only a few years past, yelped on Christmas mornings at the sight of new bicycles or BB guns or other kid things under family trees now huddled in foxholes or worked at the front and faced unimaginable rigors and loneliness.  Christmas meant home, warmth, security, and a sense of roots; war was the antithesis of all of that.  The young people had traded their bicycles for tanks or fighters or armored vehicles; the BB guns for .30-caliber machine guns and M-1 carbines; and the comfort for great peril.

No matter what the situation or the place, citizens and soldiers tried to re-create as best they could the feelings of Christmas.  Medics decorated surgical tents with makeshift Christmas trees hung with water bottles and rubber gloves.  Soldiers at the front lines gathered in bunkers for songs and prayers and joined in Communion in destroyed buildings.  Most of all, they scurried to mail call for any word from home.  Admiral William "Bull" Halsey once wrote to Admiral Chester Nimitz about cargo priority.  "Pleae stop the flow of Washington experts and sightseers," he requested.  "Each expert means two hundred less pounds of mail.  I'll trade an expert for two hundred pounds of mail anytime."

During the war, each of the armed services sent photographers into the field.  They took pictures, sent them back to the States, and wrote captions, some of them quite perceptive and moving.  One of the hundreds of thousands of photographs sent back to Washington was of an Eighth Air Force airman kneeling in prayer in the sanctuary of an English church.  The caption read: "He forgets his world for the moment... it is Christmas.  It is Christmas, just like Christmas will always be ... in his heart!  Nothing can stop that.  He offers his thanks that he has lived.  He prays, as an airman prays, for courage and guidance - and for the safety and happiness of his loved ones at home.  He prays for those he is fighting to set free ... when Christmas morning comes again."

On the one hand, the war brought enormous stress and fear from dislocation and loss; on the other, it brought many together under one sustaining purpose--national survival.  We see it in the letters, newspaper articles, sermons, journals, and music of the time and in the reminiscences of those looking back.  Many seemed stronger and more hopeful at Christmastime--the time of reunions, both real and imagined; of nostalgic and deeply personal stories and carols; of greater camaraderie and sense of belonging.  This book is about those times.