Almost AWOL Christmas Christmas Season 1943. I had been away from my fiancee for only 4 months when I arrived at Gettysburg College as Air Corps Cadet. I was a homesick fly boy. I called my Charlotte (Micky) and told her I missed her and was going A.W.O.L. and come home to see her. Bang!! I got a stern voice saying, "No you stay there” and she would come to see me. On Friday Dec 24 Micky came with my mother and father. I met them at 9 A.M. The next three days were great. Sunday night I walked (Gettysburg was only a couple of blocks in those days) them to the Bus Stop. I said goodbye and slowly walked back to "Old Dorm." which was our barracks and as the old song said "tears flowed like wine."
Thank you for sharing this story Art, but pray tell; As you loved this woman enough to go AWOL at Christmas to see, and she loved you enough to make sure you didnt, did you eventually marry?
After college the air corp had a week free so they said we could go home for the week.I called my Micky and said "Do you want to get married, she said yes" We got married ans then I left for two years, after cadet flying, infantry training , Philippine Island, and Occupation duty Korea. After 57 year of happy life my Micky went to be with our Lord in 2001.
Christmas, 1944 Colonel Wallace M. Hale, Division Chaplain, 88th Infantry Division, writes in his Christmas letter [last] year about the "Blue Devil" Division on the Winter Line in the sector east of Highway 65 [between Florence and Bologna]. "I will always recall that Christmas of 1944 in the midst of hand-to-hand conflict. The weather that year was atrocious and only young men could operate in the sleet, bitter cold, and 3 to 4 feet of snow. The Germans were trying to hold up our advance, and they made any gain expensive." "I asked my Division Headquarters to print over 5,000 Christmas Bulletins. We asked for six volunteer choir members, loaded our public adress system into a jeep trailer, had Ordnance construct a portable Christmas tree lighted with 50 auto bulbs. Van Iderstine - my driver, assistant, professional organist (all, while being my best friend) - and we headed for the front." "Wherever we found 20 or more soldiers we played Christmas carols, sang carols, read the Christmas story from the Bible - concluded the service with a GI, 5 feet tall, wearing a steel helmet singing 'Away in a Manger' with a tenor voice that must have made all the angels stop and listen - and I wept along with the battle-weary 'dog-faces' as we prayed that someday we would be home again."
57 years is brill Art, I'm sorry she's no longer with you and thanks for telling the rest. Nice story MHN.
