LAST YEAR there was snow.
(In places like Chicago and Moberly and Cedar Creek and Pittsford. Where the streets glittered with a white winter mantle by day. With window displays, twinkling lights and tinsel by night.)
This year your streets have unlikely names like Normandy Loop and Anzio Road. They don’t glitter. Multi-colored lights, even ’if you strung them on the scrawny rubber trees, would be covered over with the red dust.
(Last year you were part of hundreds, thousands, of shoppers bundled in heavy wool overcoats and overshoes in that other world of snow. They jammed stores and shops a month before Christmas Eve and came away loaded down with great armsful of wrapped and beribboned parcels that caught the mood of the season and stood out like slabs of stained glass against the snow.)
There are hundreds of shoppers here where there is no snow. They jam PXs from Vung Tau to Phu Bai. They wear olive drab fatigues soaked in sweat and tinged with the red dust. Their jungle hats are sun-bleached and their muddy boots have curled-up toes. They hunt for presents, too, or a Christmas card. Last minute shoppers like in the land of the Christmas snow. But here there are few last minute presents to buy. Early shoppers cleaned out the supplies.
(Home was a place of parties, laughter and good cheer. Smiles, handshakes, and "Merry Christmases" given and received. Old favorites like "Silent Night," "White Christmas," and "Jingle Bells" taking over the airwaves. A warm glow-the best part of Christmas — filling you with that feeling of good fellowship, of good times past and present and those to come.)
The feeling is still there-even in Vietnam. It comes from that lonesome, wilted artificial tree that the first shirt stuck proudly in the corner of the messhall in one of his more sentimental moments passed off as frivolity. From a "Merry Christmas" the CO gave you personally; not the "Merry Christmas by order of. ..." that you were directed to have at morning formation. From sitting in the dayroom with your buddies, quiet mostly, drinking beer. Not because you want to drink, especially on this day, but because it takes the edge off reality and the sting out of songs like "I’ll be Home for Christmas," and "There’s No Place Like Home for the the Holidays."
(A year ago and 13,000 miles away, there was a warm kitchen bustling with activity. Mom, maybe the wife, was heaping the dinner table with more food than you could pack away in a week. There was a golden-brown turkey and steaming hot stuffing. Mashed potatoes, gravy. Candied yams. Cranberries and pecan pie with whipped cream. Friends and family to share the feast and exchange presents. Sharing the joy of the Christmas day in the land of the snow.)
You might be one of the lucky ones this year. You might get a hot turkey dinner here, too. Eating it from a stainless steel tray in a chow hall. That subtle something missing. Something the Army hasn’t written into the Regs. The something that makes Christmas really Christmas. If you aren’t so lucky, your Christmas turkey will come out of a C-ration can marked "Turkey loaf, chopped, one each." Or maybe you’ll have to settle for a can of ham and lima beans.
(And there were the kids that made Christmas really Christmas. Your kid, maybe. Your brothers and sisters. For weeks they were reminding you of the day impending. They threaded great lengths of popcorn to add their own decorations to the tree. Nickels and dimes carefully hoarded and counted with which the youngsters bought gifts for the family. At night they went out caroling — a little off-key, but so solemn you stifled your laugh. The hymns rehearsed endlessly. Christmas morning and the living room a battleground. The presents opened before you had time to jump out of bed and load the camera.)
The kids here remind you of Christmas, too. Remind you of the little ones at home a half a world away. Remind you that the kids at home don’t have to fight
to live on the streets, peddle shoe shines and newspapers to eat, sleep under a shop awning. Remind you that the kids at home can afford visions of sugar plums.
(Maybe Christmas is a glimmering illusion-only an illusion of genuine good will and hope. A short burst of human kindness spilling over in a world of sorrow and pain. But at least it happens in the land of the snow. If only for a moment.)
The Vietnamese have no Christmas, really. Just as we have no Tet. But there is mutual understanding and respect that surfaces when a Vietnamese stranger offers you a "Merry Christmas." When the mess hall stewards put up a palm wreath of their own making out front. When a group of Vietnamese children stare in wonder at a makeshift manger a platoon has assembled.
(Last year you heard of a war far away. Remote. It only existed in newspapers and conversation. It didn’t touch you. Christmas was as it always had been. Loved ones at home together. Joy and laughter. A tree laden with lights, rooted in a pile of gifts. The children. The happiness.)
Keep the machine gun close now. Make sure the guard is posted. There is an evening star at dusk. You can see them coming tonight. If they come. Pull your helmet over your eyes. Sleep. Dream. Peace on Earth.
(Next year there will be snow.)
