Share your favorite photo or memory from a Thanksgiving you spent away from home

My memories of a Holiday while serving on the CVA- Ticonderoga was witnessing the landing and recovery of the Apollo 16 Astronauts. I was also part of the recovery of Apollo 17, and Skylab.

I don't have many pictures of me during my life in the military. I regret that.

Thanksgiving in West Berlin was awesome. We had invited single soldiers to our house and had a huge feast. Thanksgiving in Korea meant eating in the DFAC and being served by officers in their blues.

The military life sure gave me a lot of opportunities and experiences.

It was 1956, after graduating from basic traininng,I was flying to Fort Rucker for training to be a Helicopter Crew Chief on thanksgiving day. It was my first flight in a aircraft packed with others going to this destination.
When we landed, we transferred to the base very hungry from this long day of travel. When we went to the mess hall all the dinner for thanksgiving was gone and all operations for that day was all over. The mess sSargent apologized for this and said all that he had was hot dogs. Needless to say that was thanksgiving dinner that day.

As a recalled Navy Reservist that did our ODS in Sicily, Thanksgiving was a potluck affair shared with folks we knew for years and it was a great "Family" gathering far away from home.

Living in Turkey the locals held Thanksgiving Dinner for several of us. There was the skinniest turkey I had ever seen. The thought and effort was great!

Thanksgiving 2013 - my final and toughest deployment. Many men became brothers in war that rotation. That Thanksgiving on our remote COP with those Rangers and Operators felt more like family then many previous Thanksgivings. The food was out of mermite containers and most of ate standing up, but the experience, gratitude, and sacrifices were so powerful that I will never forget the feeling, and the honor of spending that Thanksgiving with in a foreign land with men would become my brothers.

Thank you for the post!

Thanksgiving on the DMZ in Vietnam in 1968 was going to be a special "dining in" for the officers in the brigade. The cooks managed to get a LOT of lobster shipped up from Da Nang. Unfortunately, the Viet Cong decided to shell our Landing Zone, LZ Nancy, the site of the dining-in. So none of the officers from the other battalions in the brigade were able to come. I was a lowly E6 working in battalion HQ. But the S1 told me to decide who got the lobster dinners. So I decided to offer the feast to a bunch of tankers who had seen a lot of combat in the DMZ. The following month I got to choose two soldiers —from the hundreds who could really use a break—to go to Cam Rahn Bay for the Bob Hope Christmas show, costarring singer and actress Ann-Margret, in a sexy miniskirt, and NFL great Rosie Grier, in deep appreciation.

One Christmas Eve at Bien Hoa Air Base, Hope quipped: “I asked McNamara if we could come and he said, ‘Why not, we’ve tried everything else!’”

Anyone who cares to read my Vietnam story, send e-mail to [login to see]

Dennis Gittinger

Stationed on Okinawa 1963 and the ship with the turkeys didn't make it to port. No turkey for Thanksgiving that year. But when the ship finally arrived we had turkey served in some fashion for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the chow hall.

The base of this cake is four foot by four foot - took hours to bake and decorate. Just part of Thanksgiving Dinner in Merrell Barracks, Nuremberg, Germany.