What is your most memorable Christmas while deployed?

Mine would be hanging in my tent with my boys and knowing that we had a week before we flew home. I feel like it was yesterday.

Sarajevo and the Balkans with IFOR and SFOR.
Midnight mass, gifts for the orphanage, thousands of bullets being fired over the city daily, almost quiet that night. Time with my team mates.

Christmas 1972 on the USS Saratoga CV60 in the Tonkin Gulf, Yankee Station. I have a picture somewhere of myself and PH3 Frank Devance at the duty desk in the ship's photo lab under a clock that read "How Time Flies When You're Having Fun." Christmas day in the Navy at war was trying at best.

During Christmas in 1966, I was stationed at Ton Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, Vietnam. Bob Hope came to entertain the troops, and because it was going to be a slow day, I told all my fellow coworkers to go see the show and I'd man the operation at 8rth Aerial Port Sq vehicle operations. We maintained and dispatched forklifts and other type aircraft loading vehicles. I could hear music coming from the event as we were right on the edge of the flight line. When the guys returned, they were happy and told me to take the rest of the day off. As we worked 12 hour days, it was a treat for me.

We deployed right before Christmas (December 9th for me, my second deployment) 09-10. Morale was OK, I wouldn't say good at that time even though our unit was good. The Chaplains and Assistants came up with the idea to pack up all the mail, care packages, and the best chow we could find on FOB Shank and bring it out to the outlying COPs. The Brigade leadership jumped on board and we got the command birds to fly around in for two days. We hit my unit (1-503rd) and a few others on Christmas eve and the rest on Christmas day. I ended out the day covered in chocolate ice cream, exhausted from heaving mail and food around for 8 hours, and felt pretty good about myself. The picture is from that day.

Christmas Time 1968. Vietnam with Bravo 5/60th, Third Platoon, 9th ID at Rach Kien. I was lucky enough to be chosen to attend the Dong Tam Bob Hope Show. It was his first time in the deep Mekong Delta. We had a miserable couple of months so the news was uplifting. There was a time during the show that an Alpha Sierra took place and Bob Hope headed for the bunker bunker built for the show people, saying "Call off the war General Ewell!!!" The troops were cracking up. Ann Margaret was sensational. Miss World was there (Penelope Plumber), Rose Greer (what a blast), the Band of Renown's, and others. In the crowd of hard a$$es, there was laughter, good cheer, and an occasional tear.

Most memorable I'd say was 2009. "No shit, there I was. . ."

I was deployed to the southern Philippines, part of Joint Special Operations Task Force-SULU. We had basically 2 squads there, one on Mindanao at the Lanao Agricultural College, and my team, located at Barangay Kagay on Jolo island. Our means of communication with "the world" was a sat phone call, about 10 - 15 minutes every couple days.

I took a few minutes to make my call, it was probably around the 20th or so, and from that earpiece came the piercing, screeching voice of my wife.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE GETTING EXTENDED?! RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS!! ASSHOLE!!!"

Hell of a way to start the call, yea?

So, what had happened was. . . Dod-durned spouse network. My best friend (we called him Bear) was in Afghanistan with his Seabee battalion, and had taken over as battalion safety officer after the Chief had to be evac'd to Germany due to illness. He happened to be waiting on his monthly safety report for the CO to print off when the CO retrieved his papers. Skipper looked at it, asked if Bear knew anyone in NMCB 1 (my battalion), and said, "Well, your buds are getting extended it looks like."

So, Bear told his wife. His wife told my wife. Bear's wife had also talked to another friends girlfriend who happened to be in my battalion, which was deployed to Okinawa. She told Angie (Bear's old lady) that they received word about being extended as well.

Pretty easy to figure out how my wife knew. I didn't. I left with my detachment on 01AUG, and Pres. Obama had just ordered the surge, which threw deployments into whack. My Chief and det OIC were planning on coming out the next day, but after the debacle with my old lady, I called him back in Zamboanga and told him what I'd heard, & he confirmed it, and that he & the CPT had planned on delivering it in-person when they came out.

I let them two break it to my crew.

However, as memorable as that part is, the next piece is better.

Now, we had been building a school in Barangay Kagay, and two Soldiers from an ODA that shall not be numbered out of respect were killed on 29September (VOIED) literally 200m from the entrance to the camp. The villagers - all Muslim - cried for our two Brothers. Not only did they give us the most sincere, warmest Christmas, with cheap souvenir T-shirts as gifts, but the absolute sincerity and love with which they did it was overwhelming. Our project wrapped up a couple days before Christmas, and we were due to leave the site the day after. On Christmas eve night, when we received our presents, they showed us a plaque they had made in honor of our two Brothers, that they wanted placed in the front of the school. Ghani, the Barangay Captain, and his brothers-in-law made the plinth for the plaque themselves, but had never told us why.

Those Muslim villagers had collectively decided to name the school after two Christian men: one black, one white, with an honorable mention of a third, PFC Jerwin Estrada, part of the Philippine Marine Corps Bn Landing Team SIX, who died supporting the construction of it.

The school we built - still untouched by extremists in the Southern Philippines to this day - was named the "J. Martin & C. Shaw Elementary School of Barangay Kagay".

THAT, Brothers & Sisters. . . THAT is the absolute best & most memorable Christmas I have ever & will ever have: being shown true, heart-felt love from Muslims, who named a school for two men from another country, another religion, and differing ethnicities, and who honored us by celebrating a holiday with us that was not their own.

Definitely a memorable Christmas 1969 at Bien Hoa AB, Vietnam. My wife never failed to send me a letter, card, or package every single day for my entire 2nd tour in that country. This particular year, she mailed a box in November to make sure I got it before Christmas, which I did. It contained every single thing needed for a good Christmas dinner to serve about 8 people. Of course, everything was canned, in a jar, or dry bagged. The menu was ham, green beans, potatoes, and brownies for dessert. All was good except the bread had some signs of 'green mold' which we cut off and ate the rest. It was still better than the chow hall on that particular day. Several of us sat around a big table in our Barracks Bar, having some great food that was warmly prepared, and watched a live presentation of the Bob Hope Show from Long Binh. AFN televised it for the very first time, so there was no need to sit in a hot humid field for entertainment. Besides, I saw the show in '68 at Cam Ranh Bay when Ann-Margaret was on the tour. It was a good day for being in RVN. Then on December 26th, the rocket attacks picked up where they left off 2 days before... just another war day at the office !!!

While on leave from Northern Iraq in DEC 2003, a S3 NCO buddy and I went on our own Band of Brothers tour in Europe. Landed in Germany, drove to Nimaggen, then Normandy, Bastogne and Christmas in Garmisch.

2008 with USFOR-A in Kabul. I took the opportunity to visit the 101st HQ in Bagram and work with my counterpart their. They put me up for the week, we reviewed ongoing plans, revised some, and I got to know the subordinate command team (BG McConville). My former boss, Mark Milley, (now CJCS) was a new BG and returning from leave during the same week. So, I made certain to be sitting at his desk, with my tanker boots (he hated them) propped up on his desk when he arrived. It was the best way to greet a former boss and jerk his chain a little. Best meal I ever had at a Division HQ.