What is your most memorable Christmas while deployed?

1972. I was on security duty at the entry post of the missile site , which consisted of a small 6x6 guard shack in the middle of no where. The only thing visible was one small building in the distance and lots of rocks, lots of rocks, and lot of rocks and a double fence covered in concertina wire. It was December 24 and my scheduled should have ended at 3:00 PM. Unfortunately it had started snowing earlier in the day and by noon the blizzard hit and we had 3 feet of snow on the ground and no visibility. I had walked outside to take a piss earlier and found a mouse haft dead struggling in the snow. I have no idea where the mouse came from. I took him inside with me. It continued to snow and the message I received was that I had no relief coming due to the weather, as if I did not know. So I spent the next 3 days, including Christmas in the 6x6 shack. Marines on security duty were not allow to have food, books, or any items that would distract them, but I had my mouse. By the third day I was wondering if you could grill a mouse over an electric heater. Luckily relief arrived by snow cats on the third day, mostly due to the needs of the crew at the missiles site. I never got the opportunity to find out if you can grill a mouse.

Remembering Christmas 54 years ago
By Robert "Bob" Kickenweitz

When I was a youth growing up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, Christmas was pretty much the same year to year other than the presents we would receive. Each year my family would watch a variety of Christmas Shows, Ozzie & Harriet Nelson with David and Ricky, Andy Williams, Perry Como, I Remember Mamma, and of course The Story of the Nativity. On Christmas morning after church, my Aunt and Uncle would drive out from New York City to spend the day and have dinner with us, sometimes my Grandmother and Grandfather would be with us also. My younger brother Edd and I knew that whatever we received as gifts from my Aunt and Uncle there would always be a new pair of slipper socks for each of us, we hated slipper socks but we knew we couldn't say anything other than, "Thank you."

The year I have the most vivid memory of is 1966. This would be my first Christmas away from home, I would not have my family and friends around me, and we would not be having dinner together and for once I wished I could be home to receive those slipper socks. December 25, 1966 found me in Xuan Loc, South Vietnam as part of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Our base camp was located about 65 miles northeast of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, between the jungle and a rubber tree plantation, I really was not looking forward to Christmas that year. I can remember that after dinner on Christmas Eve I went and took a shower, put on a clean uniform and sat down to listen to Armed Forces Radio and to write some letters for my family back home. We also listened to Hanoi Hannah the only other station on the radio. She was the Tokyo Rose of the Vietnam War. She played the best music and in between songs would send out her propaganda message. On this night, she was saying that the Vietcong, (you remember the guys in the black pajamas) would be having Christmas Dinner on the base camp of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment the following day. Now that’s a message that really got our attention.

At about ten in the evening I got up to go over to the service for Christmas Mass. Our Chaplain, Father Egan, his assistant Tony Graziano and whoever else helped, did a superb job in preparing an open field into a beautiful place to serve midnight Mass. They started by taking some beer and soda pallets to construct a floor for our altar, then nailed some plywood on top of the pallets to finish the floor. For the rear walls of the altar, they nailed four by eight sheets of plywood to the floor, then lifting the plywood seven to eight feet high into the air to create the rear walls of the altar. Blue spotlights were used to wash light across the back walls of the altar. A podium with a white cross on the front of it was in the center of the altar.


Off the altar to the left was a confessional with a long line of soldiers and some nurses. The lines were always long at the confessional, everybody always took the opportunity when it presented itself, to go to confession. While more soldiers were filling in the bare spots in the field the Chaplains assistant was playing Christmas Carols on an organ. For some reason while I was sitting on the ground singing with the others around me, I decided to lie back on the ground. Coming from the New York, New Jersey area you never see all the stars that are in the sky due to refractive lights of the big cities. But out here between a jungle and a rubber tree plantation you get to see the Milky Way in its full splendor. I’m not sure if it was my missing of family and friends or if God was telling me in his own way that things would be okay. Looking up into the night sky I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life. On the ceiling of our open air church was the same scene the shepherds must have seen two thousand years before, the only thing missing was the star of Bethlehem. The grandeur of the Milky Way in that black sky was absolutely breathtaking. Every Christmas Eve when my family and I go to Mass, inevitability sometime during the service I drift back to that magical Christmas Eve. so many years ago and so far away I'm still filled with a joy only that Christmas could deliver. This year more than any other, I would like to take the opportunity to wish everybody; especially our young men and women of the armed forces a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and that they may feel the magic of that special Christmas.

Robert Kickenweitz
11th ACR HQ & HQ Troop
Oct 66 - Sep 67
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Before I joined the military I was first in the US Peace Corps. I was stationed in the Republic of Niger. This was 1978, years for the Boko Haram invaded the country. It would be my last Christmas in country. The American Embassy invited the Peace Corps Volunteer to the embassy for a Christmas Party. Most of us were way out in the bush so we had to take a mammy wagon to go to Niamey for the party. We all stayed at the Peace Corps Hostel for the weekend of the party. We got there and there was the Embassy staff, the Embassy Marine Guards, some American ex-pats, and of course the PCVs. We had a pretty good feed bag. Fried chicken and fruit salad, the first we had seen since we had first arrived in country. After we ate we sang a dew carols. Then for the kids Santa came riding in on a camel. By the time the Marines retreated the colors first one than another and by the time retreat was done there was a dry eye in the house. The tension was tense that day earlier in the month the US Iranian Embassy was overrun by the Iranian students and our embassy staff there was held hostage. So with that the US Embassy had every American set their bags by the door in case the same happened in Niger. So there we were anxious about our friend in Iran and other Islamic countries like Chad, not knowing what the future held, That Christmas was just a little more special because of the atmosphere in that Sahara desert country.

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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 Alpha 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. Its one tough decision we know sergeants in similar positions will always 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 Alpha 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 alpha duty. I said. “Listen up my beauties, do we have any volunteers for tonight’s and tomorrow night’s Tiger Alpha’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.
Coach Chris Uzzi Veterans Listening Post. vlpost.com

For Christmas 2006 we were at OP Warheight overlooking COP Keating (from the movie The Outpost, but at the time it was COP Kamdesh as my friend Ben Keating had not given his life yet). Since the resupply flights were infrequent, at Best we had taken to buying goats from the locals to feed ourselves. For Christmas we pooled our money together and bought a cow. We butchered ourselves and made a grill out of Hesco barriers. Fortunately we had gotten mail on a previous resupply flight and my wife had sent me some barbecue sauce. We grilled that cow and ate on it until New Years. We stored it in unused sand bags and set it out in the snow. We would bring some in for a meal and heat it up on the woodburning stoves we were using for heat.