What is your most memorable Christmas while deployed?

10 hour and 20-minute combat flight on Christmas day. Enjoyed an in-flight roast beef on crumbly bread and a small chocolate milk. Same as I had on Thanksgiving and New Year day. It helped tp be doing something on those special days away from my family.

SP 5 Bruce Waltz
Christmas in Viet Nam. The Bob Hope Special was great, Enjoy the entire show surrounded by men and woman serving our country. However, after the show went back to my hooch and into immediate depression... All alone. Crasher on my bunk....laid there for about an hour, when someone knock on my door, it was the mailman on Christmas Day. I was so surprised, I told the specialist I didn't expect anyone to be working, he said to me, that this was his greatest joy, delivering packages to his fellow GIs... He handed my a large box, as I opened the box I found fresh apples, oranges, tons of candy and cookies. All sorts of salami too and a letter from my family. Seconds after I opened the box my hooch started filling up with guys from my unit... I shared all the goodies with everyone. It was great, giving/sharing simple things (apples, oranges & candy) to those homesick men, seeing them enjoy a few moments of the world back home. We all had a wonderful time and a great blessing sharing food and stories of home. We all knew we had each others backs.
God I love my country and those fighting for her.

My Christmas in the ‘Gulf

The day before Thanksgiving onboard USNS SHUGHART - a Military Sealift Command Ship off the coast of Dubai - we learned “All liberty was canceled” during morning Quarters. Threat Condition Bravo had started. Effective immediately, there would be no going ashore for the planned Thanksgiving Party. We heard the ship engines change sound, & soon found we were headed out to sea.

Thirteen of us were US Navy, the rest of the crew – Civilians or as we called them “Civ-Mars” meaning Merchant Marine Sailors. We lived on a ship the size of an aircraft carrier, loaded with military equipment.

Christmas was approaching soon & since hostilities began, there was no personal mail. Everything was reserved for operational necessities. Although spaces were decorated, it would be a rather somber Christmas.

As the Admin – Postal – Supply - Chief, the role of Morale, Welfare & Recreation fell to me. I thought about the rather Spartan Christmas we would be experiencing. Since I had to go ashore & the opportunity presented itself to do a little shopping. I loaded up on candy, nuts, little goodies and trinkets & stuffed them into my bag along with other supplies.

Back onboard, I scrounged for colored paper, tape & glue. One of the CivMar’s wandered into my lair & was commandeered into Elfdom, gluing Christmas Cutouts from wrapping paper onto the construction paper. By zero dark thirty on Christmas Eve, all fifty four bodies onboard had personalized, gaily wrapped cornucopias hanging from their doorknobs along the passageways.

Finally, a poem was taped to the bulkhead across from the Galley & job finished, tired but satisfied; we stumbled off to our respective bunks to sleep.

The next day was great. Grown men gathered in the galley with their goodies happy as little boys with Christmas Stockings! The spirit of Christmas could not be denied. Operation Desert Fox notwithstanding.

Its Christmas! but the show must go on.
Doctors, nurses, fireman, Police, Power plant workers, Truck drivers, essential workers and all of the workers that keep Christmas shining and wonderful though their efforts, I thank you. Being in a base camp 20 miles north of Saigon in 1968 Christmas eve Christmas day does not stop the advance of threat or harm to a Combat unit. In the fields of combat where life a death is a toss-up depending on the circumstances of the moment, a combat company would deploy for the night, ambush squads of mostly 10 men to protect the main companies night time position. Most of the time they were called Tiger Alfa Teams in my unit C co 3/7 199th Light infantry Brigade. The teams would assemble just before dust and move out to their coordinated positions for the night. This was a daunting task for any night but Christmas eve and Christmas night and being 20 years old and an Army Staff Sergeant in charge of 3rd platoon with the choices of who goes out on ambush and who stays in on Christmas eve and Christmas night Is the one tough decision we know sergeants in similar positions need to make. Here is the most inspiring and courageous part. When I assembled the platoon and spoke. I said “Listen up! we have command orders for one squad for tiger alfa duty for Christmas eve and Christmas night”. I figured I start by asking for volunteers then look at my rotation list to see who was next for tiger alfa duty. I said. “Listen up my beauties, do we have any volunteers for tonight’s and tomorrow night’s Tiger Alfa’s”? Incredibly, the hole Platoon raised their hands. Now we know sergeants never twitch but there was a tear in my eye. No worries no one saw it. I went to my rotation list which always included me and off we went to do our jobs for Christmas eve and Christmas night.
Veterans Listening Post. Vlpost.com
Coach Chris Uzzi.

Christmas 1980, Nurenburg, FRG. Christmas in Germany was extra special as we had the worlds best and largest Kriskringel Markt in the Nurenburg town center. Truly awesome at night with all the Christmas lights, stalls set up with handmade toys, fresh bakery items and especially the smell of spiced wine simmering in large vats. Tasted great too. It just felt so traditional and not commercialized like back in the world! I miss Germany, and I miss being in the Army that allowed me that chance to be stationed in Western Europe!

My most memorable Christmas deployed? Waking up my first morning in Vietnam, and seeing the Replacement Detachment in daylight for the first time. Moved on to Can Tho on the 26th. Christmas 1969.

Spent Christmas of 67 in Nam but was on R&R in Bangkok for Christmas of 68.
Don't remember how I pulled that off but enjoyed the crap out of it for sure.
L/Cpl Robert J. Burke

I was driving up from Navstar to Cedar II and it had been raining all day. I saw a Bulgarian convoy who only had second hand body armor hanging over their trucks as protection from IEDs. We RPed at C II and the parking lot was a sea of mud. When I jumped down, i sank up to my hip, we slogged inside to the DFAC and they had Christmas dinner ready, it was dry and warm and it wouldn't have mattered if the food sucked,[it didnt] this was December 2005..

Spent one Christmas with the Air Attaché to Guatemala. Flew C130 in to Guat City on 22 Dec. Blew a prop seal. Weather crumped. Relief aircraft with new prop and maintenance people couldn’t get in until 26 Dec. We stayed in hotel downtown but it wasn’t safe for North Americans at the time. Invited to Colonels home for Christmas dinner. His wife and two domestic servants put out a great meal for our aircrew of 7. Flew back to Howard AB on 27th.

Dinner while doing guard duty on the USS Gaudal Canal Christmas 1990. The turkey had none and they had a rib roast. All you could eat.

Probably my most memorable was serving on an isolated duty station 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. When I say isolated, I mean isolated. We rarely saw or talked to anyone outside of the 2o or so men on the crew. Entertainment was movies, cards, ping pong, B Ball in a "gym" where the roof was so low you had to shoot between the rafters, and assorted hobbies. (Wood shop, Darkroom, and ... umm never mind, that was about it.) OH and of course log flights on those occasions when the weather was good enough for them to land.

Anyway, we had the usual festivities, and a really good meal, Turkey with all the trimmings, along with a ration of "medicinal" brandy). What I remember though took place later that night on watch. We were a LORAN station, and also had a VOR, mostly we were there to provide a navigation fix for BUFFs flying alerts, but we also conducted basic weather observations and provided a check in site for commercial aircraft flying the Great Circle Route from Europe. So there I am, doing my hourly readings, and listening for our call signs on about 12 different frequencies we guarded from LF through UHF. An SAS flight called to check in, and the pilot said he had a special message for me. I was then treated to several stewardesses singing Jingle Bells and White Christmas with their wonderful Swedish accents. They then wished us a merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Truthfully they could have sung anything and it would have been wonderful just to hear a woman's voice, but to this day I can close my eyes and hear them, and a smile comes to my face.

In Naples the local people invited a bunch of us sailors to their homes for Christmas dinner.Great food,people,and fun.The Grandma would try to feed you until you burst.Then on New Years eve you would want to walk in the middle of the road because at midnight they would throw used furniture out the windows.

Probably 2007 or 2009 when I deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq for battlefield circulation with the 82nd Airborne Division's All-American Chorus. Both times, we were either, rocketed, mortared, shot at with pistols & AKs, IED'd, VBIED'd, and/or RPG'd at in a UH-60. We survived and we put smiles on faces downrange while also returning fire to dumbasses trying to take us out. I even got to call in a successful fire mission. It made us late for one of our next missions, but the BN CDR, BN CSM, and senior understood. As much as our Division CG hated us, we all got commander's coins for our actions. What we did warranted CABs, but like I said...our CG hated us. I also got to meet more famous people, such as Gary Sinise & The Lt. Dan Band, John Topper from Blues Traveler, and a number of other celebrities both times. The extra money I received helped out when I got back, too.

Christmas we pulled into Gibraltar and Spent the day at a pub that the owner invited us to dinner.

my Mom sent me a box of homemade cookies. while I was in Germany

For my first duty station, I landed Camp Pelham, in South Korea near the end of 1994. Finally assigned to my unit, and totally unprepared for all my new found freedom as a soldier and as a young man. I was easily talked into heading off camp for a few drinks with a few seasoned soldiers: a couple E2 and a PFC. And Specialist Ammes.
What I expected to be a festive introduction was more like a poorly planned yet effective hazing. Bar to bar, drink after drink, and repeat. At 19 years old I slammed everything placed in front of me. Until I passed out. And that's how I stayed until the loudest explosion I had ever heard shocked me awake.
It was 0600 the following morning. Yep! Cannon blast, then reveille as the flag was raised. As it was Christmas Eve, the Sergeant Major was up and observing the detail. I hadn't been noticed until the blast jumped me because I was placed in a mock manger with a baby Jesus and crew. I stood there as this Sergeant Major locked on me. I didn't know him but I knew by his glare that I has hit! Suddenly, there was a tug on my arm and I was off runnings, with Spec. Ammes leading and maybe laughing? Ducking into a barracks door and up the stairs Ammes slid under his bed and pointed to the other for me. Wide eyed and gut sick petrified I lay there with only the worst possible endings unfold, and some ones smelly sneakers while Spec. Ammes slept. Soundly. Till 14:00. Ammes remained amused I over the situation while I had visions of a firing squad.
In front of the Sergeant Major we picked up two weeks before extra duty and loss of pass priv.
On Christmas day feeling like the biggest dirtbag, I headed to the mess hall expecting to be shamed by my fellow soldiers, only to find the opposite. Christmas day with my platoon laughing hysterically as we retold the tale over and over.
Thanks. TV

I was away from home every christmas (1963-67) but since then I have had great Christmases.

Bosnia

Mine was thanksgiving 63 or 64 we were aggressors for the 10th special forces and deployed in the Alps along the Austrian border. Someone decided we should have a real Thanksgiving dinner so they dropped in whole frozen turkeys and other raw and canned ingredients. Not the best but surely the most memorable. Just a reinforced rifle platoon wit nothing to prepare food.

1965 AnKhe center highlands supporting 1st Cav with ammo. Living in tents . !he army supplied us with a small Christmas tree and a few decorations. Looked out of place over there. I don't think our Christmas dinner was to great. We had a better thanksgiving dinner. We didn't have much of a messhall no reefers to keep thing cold. what we ate was mostly powdered or canned. to this day I don't eat spam. That was our main diet of meat 10lb. cans of spam. Semper Fi.

There were so many Christmases I spent deployed, it's hard to answer the question. It was 1992 where the group of us decided the new Air Mobility Command really stood for Another Missed Christmas.

My most memorable one was not filled with joyful memories. For me, it was horrific.

I was a USN E-5. Due to VC threats to kill any Americans, they saw everything was off-limits. I had been in-country a little over six months and was highly agitated about the curfew and having to wait to be shot before shooting (my interpretation of the Rules of Engagement).

I decided if I were going to die there, it would be on my terms. I donned all my combat gear. I had an M1911 on my hip and an M-14 locked and loaded.

The streets were empty. I walked the center of the main street in Vinh Long screaming every rude and insulting thing I could think of in Vietnamese, and when I exhausted that, I continued in English.

An hour or so later, seeing no one around, I stood at the traffic circle, yelled out, "I'm going to live!", then got off the street.

One of the soldiers had the Jewish holidays off. When it came time for Christians to celebrate Christmas he took Christmas off as it was a national holiday. We worked both for him.

As a US Navy veteran from the Viet Nam time period I was stationed on Guam. Our aircraft did deploy to Viet Nam. Not being part of an aircrew I really don't know what their mission was. I hope that they helped protect the personal on the ground. I became friends with a aircrew person from the station on Guam. During the Christmas time they did Santa drops for the dependent children that were there. Here is the only photo I took during one of those drops. This was December 1969.

Santa Clause in the Hofbrau House in Munich, Germany with an Oommpah pah band.

I was a medic with Bravo Co. 2/501st, 101 Airborne in Vietnam, 69-70. I recall we were just back from the field, at FB Bastogne for Christmas. That evening everyone was celebrating and kind of hanging loose. I walked all around the whole hill and where ever I went there was the smell and really a cloud of marijuana haze covering the whole place. It was awesome.

Kneeling in the sand with about 30 Marines, Airmen, and Soldiers while a Catholic Priest Chaplain gave us a brief eulogy on Christmas morning. Mogadishu, Somalia. Ruins of the former US embassy compound. Marine snipers on the roof gave us over watch.seemed surreal.

Christmas 1969 I was in Phu Hep, RVN. I had guard duty Christmas eve, in the rain. I sat there in my poncho thinking about my family back home. It was my first Christmas away from my family. I can't explain it, but I had a different outlook on my life up to that point ( it wasn't good ) and I think I became a better person after that night. In a lot of ways, it was the best Christmas of my life up to that point.

In 1972 I was part of the team supporting members from the 24th Spcl Ops Sq in disaster relief operations for the Managua, Nicaragua earthquake. The earthquake hit Christmas Eve morning and within hours the relief teams were on their way.

I was in Long Binh the same year the same year. Cookies from home and the Bob Hope show was the best Christmas ever. Then the Tet offensive happened 2 months later.

Christmas eve with the 7th Infantry Division, in Korea in 1954, among the 2,000 GIs sitting in the bitter cold to celebrate Christmas with Cardinal Spellman, who was on a makeshift stage with heaters at his back and a cruel wind at his front. When he said, "America's forgotten sons," the roar from the troops could be heard in North Korea. He went on to tell us we were there so the star of communism didn't replace the star of Bethlehem. We were all warmer in the Cardinal"s presence because it let us know that people who mattered in the States knew where we were and thanked us for being there.

I honestly do not remember Christmas in Vietnam 1970. I imagine the mess hall had a turkey dinner or something special. I was in the scout platoon of the 3/5 Cav at Dong Ha. I do remember being on a liaison mission with a S3 officer at the Cua Viet South Vietnamese Naval base for a week. The US Navy was sending barrages up the river to load up blown up tanks, etc. at Quang Tru and we coordinated the Army patrols along the river with the Navy so they didn't shoot each other up. Of course me being the enlisted guy, I had the night shift to receive sit reps. When we returned to our unit, the 1st Sgt. told me trucks were leaving in an hour to go to Da Nang for the Bob Hope show and he saved a place for me. I told him I hadn't slept much for the past week and just wanted to go to bed. I told him to give my place to someone else. I thought our guys would be in the last row anyway. As it turned out, our guys were in the second row. I do remember pulling guard duty on New Year's Eve and seeing all the fireworks of flares, tracers, etc. at midnight.

Spent Christmas Eve and morning in the Joint Security Area (Korean DMZ) in 1974. The cook from the Swiss/Swede compound (Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission) brought their party leftovers out to the guard post at the entrance to the JSA late on the Eve. We were going to shoot him until we saw he had aluminum foil in his hands and not a weapon. "Thanks very much, but next time call first." We were relieved about 0800 and went back for chow before heading to the QRF site. Some clown had unrolled red and green condoms and thumbtacked them around a poster of "Suzy," our barracks sweetheart. The feather boa she was wearing wasn't enough holiday cheer, you see. QRF until 1600 then back to the Quonset hut where I hunkered down in my bunk under a couple of Korean-made quilts and GI blankets. We had the space heater glowing red that night. Not much of a celebration.

1968 SETTING IN RICE PADDY IN VIETNAM. WISHING I WAS HOM IN TRAVERSE CITY,MI. WITH MY FAMILY.

My most memorable Christmas was the Bob Hope and Raquel Welch Christmas tour on the Ranger in 1967. I was on the Destroyer USS Orleck (DD-886) at Yankee Station (Vietnam War) and we had a lottery to see who would be able to helicopter over for the show. I didn't win, but we were cruising alongside the carrier, close enough so we could faintly hear the show and make out the pink one of the women was wearing. Took photos, but not able to discern much from where I was. Nevertheless, it was a major milestone on my WESPAC cruise!

Christmas 1970 I was on a mountain top firebase in the Central Highlands of Vietnam with the
Army's 1st Cav Division. My buddy and I spent the evening Laying on our backs watching the best meteor shower I have ever seen.

Christmas 1968, I was a ground radio operator at Site 4, Karamursel AS, Turkey. I had been in the country less than two months. I was at work Christmas Eve and stepped outside the building. I could hear sheep out in the field and the shepherds were playing their wooden flutes. Talk about a Luke 2 experience. I half expected to see the sky full of angels in a few moments. That was the closest I had ever been physically to where it all started and why we have Christmas.

Christmas day 1967 I was at U-Tapao Airfield, Thailand as an aircraft mechanic on B-52 bombers/KC-135 tankers. The 24 hour Christmas truce that started Christmas eve meant I would be working Christmas day since all the aircraft were there. I remember some guys painted Christmas greetings for the Viet Cong/NVA on the external bombs under the wings. Later I heard a Colonel didn't like them & made them wash them off. I didn't realize it at the time but I guess political correctness began that day.

I only had one but I was without the rest of my CA team and with a new unit at a COP on the banks for the Tigris. It was actually pretty relaxing and enjoyable.

I was in basic training for Christmas 1983. Everyone was so depressed and missing family and home. When lights out was announced and our whole flight hit the sack; it was quiet and dark, there was no talking on this night. About 30 minutes after we all got into our beds our First Sgt. got on the giant voice and started telling us about Airmen guarding the DMZ, and Airmen patroling the flightlines on the Alaskan/Russian boarders. So don't feel too bad about being in BMT for Christmas. Well that got everyone crying in their beds until we fell asleep. Very memorable time in my 27 year AD military career. Merry Christmas to All!!!!

Cmsgt. Dave