This Is Thunderbirds' Fourth Army Christmas

This Is Thunderbirds' Fourth Army Christmas

Christmas, 1940, was about as miserable a Christmas as it's possible for an outfit to spend back in the States. It was rainy there at Fort Sill, and some say that Fort Sill mud will match Italian mud and take a handicap.

Those early-day Thunderbirds were living in that mud, too, because just a few months before — in September — they'd piled into the ancient jalopies the National Guard used in those days, ridden across the mountains and prairies, and settled down in open fields at the Oklahoma Field Artillery center.

They had to build their own camp from scratch, with little help from civilian workers. All the time they lived at Sill they resided in Sibley-heated pyramidal tents, with damp concrete floors.

So Christmas Day found a good part of the Division plowing around in the mud, trying to build enough gravel walks to keep the Division above the ground, as they always did on days when the outfits weren't training. New Year's Day was spent the same way. Happy Holiday, 1940.

By 1941's Joyous Day, the Thunderbirds were pretty well established at Camp Barkeley, Texas, in gas heated tents with wooden floors, and the mud problem had been pretty well taken care of by Christmas. A lot of guys got to spend Christmas at home, particularly the Westerners, but not so many as might have done so if Japan hadn't chosen a few weeks before to unload a lot of our old scrap iron on some of our old battleships out Pearl Harbor way.

Enjoyment of the pre-Christmas season was somewhat marred by the thought that the division might be on transports at Yuletide, and heading west. It was the first of a series of grim war Christmases. But there was plenty of what economists call consumer goods, Christmas presents were plentiful, and potent beverages were available in Abilene.

Barkeley soldiers made others happy that Christmas, notably a bevy of seedy physicians who made their livings writing prescriptions for whiskey behind their desks at Abilene's drug stores. They charged by the prescription, and husky soldiers were diagnosed as having all sorts of depressing ailments that required alcoholic medication.

White Christmas in Pine Camp, 1942, wasn't any novelty. Pine Camp probably had a White Labor Day before we arrived, and every day was white. Transportation was in a mess, furloughs were all short and not very many could leave at one time, and passes were not long enough to get home on.

"Hospitable" Watertown opened wide its bars, and Noel for most was a GI trukey dinner, half a day's wait in sub-zero weather in a brisk wind, waiting for a bus heading bar-ward.

At Pine Camp the "overseas" gifts began coming in, and considerate relatives dispatched daintily wrapped money belts (at the rate of three per man), pheasant-feather-lined gloves in case you were going to be sent to the Antartic and initialled quinine boxes in case you were going to the tropics.

This fourth Christmas, no matter how unpleasant, will be the longest remembered. Before the war a lot of people who could afford it left their homes and packed off to Italy to spend Christmas, although under somewhat different conditions from the ones the division is experiencing.

Perhaps they were eccentric, but they came here.

It's anybody guess where the 45th will spend next Christmas, but despite the slow progress at the moment it isn't likely that the Thunderbirds will be wishing one another Buon Natale in 1944.

Army of Occupation?

In the Pacific?

On a homeward-bound transport?

In an American army camp?

Or in civilian clothes at the dinner table with relatives and friends? (very much possible)

Any 45th man get a crystal ball for Christmas?

(The faithful linotype operator, who speaks a bit of English, inserted his own comment in the third line from the end of this story. I haven't got the heart to take it out of the proof. —

Bread on Waters Just Floats Off

Away back in September, before even the department stores in the States had begun to think of Christmas, Sgt. Ernesto (Hombre) Manzanarez, Mora, N. M., began his holiday mailing.

In one night he laboriously composed 18 separate Christmas cards. He worked all night to the job. Manzanarez was doing his Christmas mailing early.

Two weeks before Christmas "Hombre" hadn't even received a card.

The Old and New

Pfc. Rene C. (Yank) Levy was probably the first man in the 45th to receive a Christmas card this year. Away back in October he received the greeting. With it came a letter six months old.

Thunderbird Commander Sends Christmas Greeting

To the fighting men of the 45th Infantry Division I extend sincerest Christmas Greetings. The Yuletide Season finds us far from our homes and our loved ones. We take satisfaction, however, in knowing that we fight for a just cause against a cruel, inhuman enemy who would enslave our people and destroy our homes just as he has wantonly destroyed and mercilessly killed wherever he has gone.

Our one aim must be to pursue and smash the enemy at every turn. We must allow him no respite until he has been soundly crushed and no remnant of the tyrant remains. Only then can we guarantee ourselves and our descendants the rights and ideals we cherish.

Janie sat on the divan with her head turned slightly to read a letter by the lamp which only slightly illuminated the dim room. There was some light from the fire, which shimmered on the tinsel of the tree, and glowed in the bright ornaments she had hung there so carefully earlier in the evening. She read aloud, softly, clearly but with just a note of sadness in her tone; tenderness, too.

"Snow on an Italian mountainside doesn't look like the snow at home," she read. "It reminds me that Christmas is near, and that it's not going to be the kind of Christmas we knew together in Ohio when we were kids.

"Remember the pageant we were in together at the Methodist Church? You were the spirit of

Christmas in a lot of fluffy cheesecloth, and I put on a white wig and make-up to play a Scrooge. After the pageant you walked home with Eddie because i couldn't get all the makeup off my face. Your couldn't have been more than six at the time, but I've never forgiven you for that, you faithless hussy.

"Our Christmas I liked best was in 1940, when we had been away at school all year—different schools, darn the luck, and you got leave from your job in the library just in time to make it home. I spent so much time at your house that Dad said it didn't seem like I had been home at all. He thought it was all right, though, when I explained I'd been busy proposing to you, and you'd finally said 'yes.'

"It took me a long time to get around to marrying you, though, didn't it Pet? in 1941 we were still engaged. Dad died in April, wasn't it? Those days are so confused I can't quite remember, with all the legal business and delay in getting the estate settled. I had a hard timekeeping things going for Mom for a while on my salary. I got a raise around Christmas, though, and finally got around to buying you a ring.

"It was Thanksgiving Day of '42 that Mercer's wired for me to come to Idianapolis, and we finally set the date. You knew what was coming, and had your folks back in the kitchen when I got to your house. How did you know? My voice give it away over the phone? I only said I had something to tell you. I guess I must have sounded pretty excited, but we'd waited

-months for that wire.

"But I'd hardly gotten settled in my new job when that other message came, the one starting out with 'Greetings' and ending up with talk of fines and imprisonments. Well, if it hadn't been for you I would have gone long before. But it was a pretty miserable Christmas all the same, in that cold camp eating Christmas dinner with a lot of GI's who aren't as good looking as you.

"I'm glad my stripes came through when they did, or we'd be setting one big record for 'the longest engagement.' As it was, we didn't get to play house very long. And you couldn't even see me off at the boat.

"The muffler and wool socks I asked for got here okay. You must have mailed them a long time before Christmas, but that was the wise thing to do. I knew they were a Christmas present, but I opened them up anyway because it's col' in these here hills, Chile. I've had prettier Christmas presents from you, but none that was quite so practical. I appreciate them loads these nights in the open, but I hope you'll never have to send any more.

Janie looked up from the letter, as she laid it on the stack, all addressed in the same strong handwriting. Her eyes were just a little moist. The firelight did things for her soft brown hair, and lighted up her oval face in most becoming fashion. The clock in the hall, deep and clear, rang twelve. Janie turned and smiled at the tall blonde man opposite her in an easy chair, who had been regarding her absently during the reading of her husband's letter. Their eyes met, and in his she saw a worshipful look. The vibration of the chimes died in echoes, and Janie spoke.

"Merry Christmas, Joe - '44."

A Yule Gift Meets Sad Fate

A box of cigars came in for Pfc. Alf Moore, Pauntotoc, Miss., a Christmas present form home. He treasured the box, and above the cries of his fellow muleteers, he stowed them away in his pup tent.

"These are a Christmas present," he said, "and on December 25th I'll bust out with them."

For two days he kept them in his tent while he tended his mules and thought about Christmas. The rain started, and the little stream that flows alongside the corral became a raging torrent. The water rose 15 feet in places, and one of the places was in Moore's tent.

Moore didn't salvage the cigars; they were all water soaked and broken, but he is using the box they came in.

Behind Times

Someone who thinks a lot of Sgt. Clyde Sodowski, Blackwell, Okla., hasn't kept up with him very well. They sent him a white shirt and a tie, enclosing a note asking whether the barracks are comfortable.

It's a Good Thing Powers Is Powerful Fond of Old Spice

Back in the states St. Sgt. John Powers, Chickasha, Okla., was a devoted user of "Old Spice" toilet and shaving articles. When he noticed his supply running low some time ago he wrote his wife in Chickasha, suggesting she send him a kit of the sweet-smelling "Old Spice."

The wife was unable to find any "Old Spice" kits in Chickasha, but she did buy another brand and mail it to him, with a letter of apology for not sending what he had asked for.

A sister of the wife's who lived in Oklahoma City, knowing Powers' fondness for "Old Spice," found one of the kits and mailed it to him as a Christmas present.

Another sister of the wife's, who lived in Winona, Minn., also knowing of his fondness for that particular brand, bought one and mailed it to him.

A third sister, living in Chickasha, found one of the kits in town and mailed it to Powers.

In the meantime his wife located one of the kits and mailed it to him, saying she had had to go to Oklahoma City for it, but knowing how fond he was of the brand made the trip worth while.

Powers now owns four complete "Old Spice" kits, sufficient, he feels, to last for the duration.

The chow whistle blew as Cpl. Boyd Strunk, Ada, Okla., finished unwrapping his Christmas packages. He laid them aside, grabbed his meat can, and climbed out of his foxhole to hit the line.

Chow over, he returned to his presents. He had a identification bracelet, cheese, mustard and other delicacies, but no pickles. Someone had purloined his gherkins.

Several weeks ago Kate Smith, on her Friday night broadcast, sang "White Christmas" and dedicated it to the 45th Division.