In the military, Christmas seems a special time, especially to soldiers away from home.
One Christmas that sticks out to me is one in Germany. I was a young Captain, maybe 26 and assigned to a Nike Hercules Missile unit. We had this crazy Sergeant Major who pretty much ran everything. One day he says to me “Chaplain, it is Christmas, we need to get a project where the troops can feel like they are in the spirit of Christmas. What about finding us something like an orphanage and we’ll get some presents and visit.” I go to several German Orphanage type places. Other American military units had the kids locked up. OK, let’s do something else. I found this old folks home we could visit.
The Sergeant Major rounds up a bus load of troops to go with me. We bring presents for the old folks. We get there in early afternoon. Bunch of American GIs, maybe twenty. We are met by the Director of the home who says something like, "I hope you aren’t going to be disappointed. The men and women don’t get much attention, seldom are they visited. They mostly just sit."
There were about 39 or forty grandmas/PAs. The GIs don’t speak a word of German other than eine beer bitta. The Germans don’t speak English.
The old folks, men and women, began dancing with the GIs or with each other. I guess they didn’t need language They were all having such a good time. The Director was flabbergasted. Finally it was time to go. We loaded all the troops in the bus. The director said, "I’ve never seen anything like this. Most of the patients refuse to do anything and here they have been dancing and having a ball.
We pulled out of the driveway and the oldsters were following us waving goodbye with their handkerchiefs. What a good time. Two days later I discovered that the soldiers had spiked the punch. All the old people were pretty soused by the time we left. Oh well, we gave them a great Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment