Christmas, 1944

The snow lay white again upon the stony soil of New England, the grey distances of the plains, the towering Western mountains; once more poinsettias bloomed in the South's red soil. In Boston's fabled Louisburg Square, and in every other U.S. city and hamlet, carolers would sing this week below candlelit windows.

This would be the fourth U.S. wartime Christmas. The first already seemed as if it had been in another decade. On Christmas Eve, 1941, antiaircraft guns were set up in the backyards of West Coast cities. San Antonio's telephone system was jammed by a rumor—the Jap Fleet was cruising into the Gulf of Mexico. Electric toasters, alarm clocks, nylon stockings were still for sale. There were debutante balls at which orchestras played Blues in the Night. Everywhere, East, West and South, the people waited for air raids. Christmas, they thought, would be just the time the enemy would choose.

But now the air-raid sirens were silent, and the new factories, not yet built in 1941, were begrimed. The early battles at Wake and Manila seemed almost as distant as the Argonne.

Mud, Cold and Death. Christmas, 1944, would find millions of Americans overseas. To front-line troops, Christmas would be another day of mud, cold, death and wounds. There seemed no prospect of the spontaneous Christmas Day truces of World War I. But everywhere, on U.S. war fronts, there would be time for religious services—on the field, in tiny tents and in foreign churches. Sometimes the churches would also be crowded with white-swathed wounded (see cut).

In every theater homesick men would hear the ancient words ". . . and on earth peace, good will to men. ..." and secretly treasure their memories of warmth, love and good cheer. Hundreds of fighting ships would have Christmas trees, flown west from Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nimitz would be visited by a Seabee Santa Claus. Soldiers slogging up Highway 65, near the Fifth Army's Italian front, would see a huge Merry Christmas sign, and a fog-shrouded Apennine pine decorated with 400 colored lights. G.I.s would have Christmas parties for children in France, England, Italy, Iceland, the Philippines; and each father could seek out children the same age as his own, and play at being home again.