By Tom Paré
It was Christmas Eve 1952, and it started out no different than any other night in the land of the frozen chosen. From inside the sandbagged bunker, they heard the persistent howling of the cold Manchurian wind whipping down and around the North Korean mountains. The only other sounds were the stomping of feet in vain attempts to keep warm in the frigid night, and the staccato reports of the PRC-10 radio, as muffled voices known only by code names penetrated a lonely vigil.

Hourly, the front line platoons checked in to report sporadic shelling or all quiet in their sector. Sometimes they needed more ammunition, food, or rat poison, and sometimes they just needed to hear another voice in this long, long night.

Papa-San hill reared up huge and ugly across the wind-swept expanse of Kumwha Valley, and they wondered why in hell they were there. It was cold in this winter of their own discontent, and they slept fitfully trying to ignore ten-degree weather while they shared their sleeping bags with M-1 rifle mistresses. They slept in their clothes and boots in case of an enemy attack, and they wondered if it would be better to freeze or be shot or bayoneted. Sleep, if it came at all, lasted two or three hours, until they were awakened to relieve a guard. They would sneak drags on Luckies or Camels through cupped hands, hiding the glow, because the slightest light would puncture the protective darkness. On this moonless night, a soldier carelessly lit up outside the command post bunker, and within minutes, they were hit with a barrage of Chinese mortar fire. The 75mm recoilless platoon returned the fire and the night exploded with four hours of heavy weapon bombardment, both incoming and friendly….

When the smoke and the noise and the dark cleared, and the cold, cloudless, blue sky belied the activity of the night before, it was time to gather up the horrors. A strange quiet echoed across these hills. Both sides left their positions to pick up their dead. No shots were fired. It was Christmas Day…

* * *

The young soldier’s thoughts flashed back to the Christmases at his grandfather’s house on Windsor Avenue in the late 1930s. He saw the huge decorated tree in the parlor and could almost hear the Christmas songs at the player piano. He thought about the one in 1942, when they had lost their house and there were no gifts. And soon all the memories came tumbling out. In 1945, that giddy year of victory, his dad proudly sat in the living room of the old house at 395 Josephine and watched as the younger boys tried to outdo each other ripping open their gifts, while the older brothers tried on skates or new hi-top boots.

In his reverie, and even during this year of 1952 and a new war, he thought mostly of his mom. He knew how much she suffered in the bad years when there were no gifts, and how she made cut-out ornaments to hang on their little tree. He remembered the cookies and popcorn balls and apples and oranges in the stockings because there wasn’t any money to buy gifts like electric trains or boxing gloves or lead soldiers. And sometimes she dabbed her eyes while mending clothes to be wrapped and handed down to the younger boys.

The young soldier, just turned nineteen, thought to himself that when he got home again, he would see to it that she never again had to be sad at Christmas. And then he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his field jacket….

* * *
Suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of the mortars and a guard screaming, “Incoming, incoming.” The explosions started again. He hit the dirt and shielded his head and cried out to his mom. It was Christmas Day…

Ed. note: Tom Paré lives in Suttons Bay Township.