What is your most memorable Christmas while deployed?

South Pole. We had a diesel carving contest. Our tree was made of cans, candy wrappers, and licorice. Dinner was ham and turkey with all the fixings. Since the sun was up 24/7, everyone noticed they missed the night time "eve" part of it.

On Christmas Eve 1970 I was on duty at Monkey Mountain, RVN (Panama Control) when a deep voice boomed out over Guard frequency - "This is God on Guard - Happy Birthday Son"
And just as quick a smaller voice piped up on Guard - "Thanks Pop!”

I was chuckling over that the rest of the night.

My folks sent me a decorated tree for my room and a bunch of gifts to go under it.

The chow hall had a spectacular feed and I stuffed my cargo pant pockets with apples and oranges for Mama-San's kids - these were almost unheard-of for the Vietnamese at the time.

My most memorable Christmas while being deployed was in Vietnam, December 1966, when LZ Bird was trying to be over run by the NVA. It was a major battle with the First Cav kicking ass. Two of my friends who worked at the POL were captured, never to be heard of again. We lifted off right after the attack began. There were many NVA but they weren't good enough to defeat us. Read the attached link:
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Marshall-SLA/Bird.html

Camp Estelle, Afghanistan 2013. The 838th AEAG Spartans and our Italian Air Force Friends gathered together on Christmas Night, to a bonfire. I had a content look on my face that night as my own year long deployment was coming to an end. While I missed my wife and kids terribly, I couldn't ignore one of the few moments of true camaraderie we get to experience in the military today. That night and that deployment for that matter are experiences I will never forget.

Christmas Day 1971. We were A few miles off Da Nang waiting for Bob Hope to come aboard. The fog was so bad he couldn't make. Instead of a Bob Hope show on Christmas Day we moved out of the fog and flew missions into Laos. What a merry Christmas that was

Berlin 1984. We got drunk and snuck over to the Battalion Comanders head quarters. He had just had it landscaped that fall. We cut down one of his pine trees with an e-tool. Took it back to our room and decorated it. It's said he is still looking for us.

Mine was Desert Storm...we had already deployed from Germany to Saudi Arabia around 12/09/90 for Desert Shield. My 2 other brothers and I were sent to different locations in Saudi Arabia prepping for combat and this was the first combat operation which we would serve together.

It was scary as hell because we had no way of contacting each other, even though I had Global DSN and could call anywhere. I spent my Christmas eating the REAL ARMY MREs and T-Rations before we were able to go to KKMC on a log run which we put money together and bought several whole chicken which we grilled out in the hot desert.

I remember it well because as soon as the chicken were ready to eat, we were HIT by one of Saudi's dust storm which covered EVERYTHING in dust!!!

Some Merry Christmas that was! LOL

I went straight from Vietnam to my next duty assignment. Do not pass-go / do not collect $200. I served in Vietnam as a member of the Marine Security Guard detachment at the American Embassy in Saigon at the time of its evacuation in 1975. Evac'd, float to Manila and here are your orders: American Consulate in Asmara, Ethiopia where I would receive hazardous duty pay for my entire time there (civil war had just broken out and we were literally stuck in the middle between two adversaries, neither of which liked us / but that's all another story). How does this relate to Christmas? I received orders in mid-December that transferred me to the embassy in Brussels, Belgium and did so on Christmas Eve. I was very thankful for Christmas 1975 - alone, brand new arrival but didn't have to worry about incoming or any of the "to whom it may concerns" that were common in northern Ethiopia and Vietnam earlier that year. Still remember dinner that Christmas: hot dogs on toasted raisin bread, the only thing in the Marine House kitchen. But at least it was peaceful.

In December of 1969 I was at Phu Bai, in the former Republic of Viet Nam. I was the new guy (fng) and while not being satisfied with being low man on the totem pole, I had incurred the wrath of my 1st Sergeant by getting drunk and fighting. So while my comrades enjoyed the Bob Hope show at Camp Eagle, I listened to the show on AFVN radio on a tiny transistor radio while I pulled a 12 hour day guard shift in a bunker on the perimeter, pouring down monsoon rain and a lovely Christmas dinner of cold C ration turkey. I was a miserable little pup but I learned my lesson.

Capturing Saddam Hussein during the month of December, Christmas week back in 2003. And receiving care packages during the holidays while in Tikrit Iraq.

Dec. 25th 1971 off the Vietnamese Coast. We were refueling another Ship when our steering went out. The ships rammed and hoses and cables were flying everywhere. Took two days to repair all the damage and we were ready to send a avgas to the Enterprise. Not much of a Christmas but we got the job done.

2003 while at Victory Base, Baghdad. I spent Christmas Eve out on a guard tower to let an enlisted soldier have the time off. Christmas day dinner I was invited to spend with the Australian contingent. It was a great time and will never forget it.

Sad to say I don't remember a Christmas Deployed. At the Very Least I know that I was in Diego Garcia for at least One Christmas. Actually now that I think about it. Christmas in Pearl was pretty cool. The Christmas Spread at COMSUBPAC Pearl Chow Hall was wonderful.

I was in Iraq in 2003, and although I wasn't able to see them in person, some of the WWE wrestlers came to LSA Anaconda. I got to watch the show on tv.

Christmas 2004 Camp Ramadi. S BTRY 5/11 3rd Plt attached to 2/11. They gave us two beers and one of those airline bottles of rum or vodka per person. And you can guess there was a bunch of trading. Everyone trying to get booze from from the fellas that didn't drink and the beer only and liquor only folks haggling. Was a good day.

Canned Turkey in Cu Chi and watching some Korean all girl band playing "I want to go Home" and getting hit by 122 mm rockets that night

Being in South Korea and having my friends want to go out to "karaoke". I chose to stay in and call home to my family. When they got back and told asked to borrow money because they were robbed by hookers, I knew I made the right choice.

OIF 2006. Our tree

Spent Christmas Eve '71 stuck at Ft. Hood on CQ duty with relief at midnight. Knowing I was to be deployed to Vietnam in January I was certain this might be my last Christmas. Having grown up in Dallas, less than 3 hours away I called home to tell my father I'd be home for Christmas. Once off duty I caught a cab to the Belton Grey Hound bus depot. Having never experienced bus travel I bought a ticket to Dallas. The bus left Belton around 1 am and i could smell the bacon my dad was frying in his cast iron skillet. As I mentioned this was a bus depot and I had grown up in Texas traveling all over the state. What I experience over the next 15 hours in route to Dallas was an Almanac view of almost every city with less than 500 citizens between Killeen and Dallas. I watch people come and go the entire time wondering how much longer before I would see the Dallas skyline on the horizon. When the bus stopped for lunch in Waco I began to realize the enormous mistake I had made. We pulled into the same bus station that I consumed a box lunch in the day I got drafted...at 5 pm Christmas Day! When i checked the return schedule to Killeen I quickly realized that if I was going to report for duty the day after Christmas I had no choice to catch another bus in less than an hour. I called home to find to Army friends who were stationed with me celebrating Christmas with my family. I told everyone the dilemma, wished them the best, and hopped the bus. I spen t my next Christmas at Camp Stanley, outside of Oijonbu South Korea. Having been pulled from RVN in December '72 I was redeployed to Korea. I have profound respect to the vets who fought there during the Korean War since 1951 was the coldest winter in their history....and while the jungle was the jungle those vets fought up one granite mountain after another. I did make it to Korea in time for the Bob Hope Christmas show at 2nd Inf command in Tong Du Chon. Since I was coming off the DMZ we got front row center stage. I do remember it being so cold that even with two parkas we were all freezing.

1990, Operation Desert Shield, pulling TOC duty NCO with Deuce-and-a-half's crawling through our Battalion camp with the cargo canvases rolled up on the sides and outlined with improvised Christmas lights from home (thanks to the motor pool electrical genius who rewired them from 120VAC to 24VDC !). In the backs of those trucks were the CSM, staff officers and firing battery lieutenants singing carols. About half the battalion was having dinner that night with Saudi Aramco employees courtesy of the Host A Soldier program, so the ones in camp on Christmas eve were the ones who were hosted for Thanksgiving (1SG's made sure nobody double-dipped on both). Those singers all were hoarse the next day from having to sing at max volume over the engine noise !

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.

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.

I was on yet another war deployment and we'd been given some downtime to Rest Reload and Regroup. we Arrived in France for a short stay and I immediately put in for leave for the entire visit because we'd be there on Christmas day. I got a hotel room a hot shower and lots of food! I talked to my wife and kids on Christmas and that just made the entire deployment worthwhile for me. I got to tour the city of Marseilles, and the whole city was filled with lights people having a really good time. Put a lot of things about this life back into perspective. But we had a good time!