AFTER OUR REGIMENT was moved back from New Georgia to Guadalcanal to prepare for the next assignment, I had some free time in between administrative work catch- up. Many of those spare hours were spent writing stories about our recent engagement. They were mostly factual…. as factual as a writer with poetic license can get. Occasionally, however, I would bang out a roman a clef . . . a piece of fiction based squarely on fact. One of these stories was about an imaginative Christmas spent in the jungles. As it turned out this piece was pretty close to the reality of our next Christmas, and it could stand symbolically for all infantry soldiers in all wars fighting in jungle- like conditions on December 25.
A month ago, our boys departed from New Georgia. The fighting was all over. We had helped take the airport. Before New Georgia it was the Russell Islands. Before that, Guadalcanal. We’ve spent one Christmas on the Fiji Islands, so a tropical Yuletide will be no novelty.
We are now behind the front lines, somewhere. We are re-organizing, getting set, shadow boxing with machine guns, doing roadwork in jungle terrain, sharpening our punches on a 200- yard rifle range. We can’t promise that we’ll be at it again December 25. We don’t know. I’m writing this as if a foxhole Christmas is the prospect.
That’s why there’ll be little outward sign of holiday. We are ground- bound infantry. We will be too close to Japanese lines to make even crude church services feasible. There will be Christmas, however, in hearts and minds. When you lie in a hole built up by bamboo logs and coral and the shrapnel whines overhead, you become converted by that rude shelter, far more than you have ever been by lofty cathedrals. The man ahead of you in an elongated squad column is knocked down by machine- gun fire. You want to believe that there is someone up there who is looking out for you in future ambushes.
The cross- like four- man holes are dug, the outposts are drawn in, the fields of fire are cut, and the cans of vegetable hash are opened. Tastes pretty good, even if this same C ration has been your breakfast, lunch and supper the past month. The boys will talk about Christmas turkeys, and the sadists will recall sumptuous Christmas meals . . . a hundred years ago, it seems . . . lingering gently on each bit of drumstick and each cranberry.
A few boys will break the rules. They’ll whisper about old times, about other Christmas Eves. The captain will tell them harshly to ‘‘ keep your mouths shut, ’’ but the CO doesn’t know who’s talking and he isn’t allowed out of his hole to find out.
What do the boys think underneath this small talk? You guess it. I believe in each soldier out here there’s that insatiable yearning to be home, safe and sound, warm and dry. They don’t whimper, but they’ll complain about being away so long.
Will it be a white Christmas by 1944? Or 1945? Or 1946? Do they pray more fervently on Christmas Eve? I guess they do. It’s a holy night and that might give a little extra consideration tonight. As the enemy planes with their weird off- beat motors fly overhead and the searchlight beams finger them in the sky and the ack- ack tracers (like Christmas lights) shoot up and the bomb bays open and spit downward, then a fellow gets a little desperate and prays tonight or any night.
Sleep. Day soon breaks. The platoon sergeant reads the gist of the notes he took at the CO’s meeting. Objective is three miles away on the knoll of that hill. The men look on bitterly. One frowns: ‘‘ Merry Christmas! ’’
We start our approach march with one squad preceding the main advance guard. The enemy dual- purpose gun shells us a little, more a nuisance than with any lethal value. We plod on slowly, each file looking toward its side of the jungle for machine guns and snipers. Suddenly a shot like a cap pistol cracks out. We hit the ground, wiggle toward the brush along the road, and look and wait. We can’t do anything else. We think of home and Christmas again. The point- squad has spotted the sniper. Lots of firing. They made sure he’s dead even if he won’t fall out of the tree. But there’s a call for litter bearers and Corporal Thompson is lugged off with a shoulder wound. He’s glad he’s out of it for a time.
We find a pillbox, surround it, throw in everything. Finally roll a couple of hand grenades into the slits. We collect our wounded. One boy is dead. We hang around and help dig the grave while the chaplain scurries forward and finishes it off. It’s Tom, the blond kid, whose letters I’ve censored for the past six months.
No one cries, because this is old stuff. Carl, the dead boy’s foxhole partner, looks up at the lieutenant and kind of apologizes for sentiment: ‘‘ No more Christmases for Tom, eh sir? ’’