I'll be home for Christmas....

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Listen to the words of this song next time you hear it and bear in mind that it was written for the servicemen and women serving in World War II.  A song to encourage and remind them that coming home was just around the corner maybe by Christmas….

His name was Ford McKenzie.  He was 18 when he joined the army and left that backwoods town in south Mississippi.  His father saw him off to the bus stop and in an encouraging but humorous send off he gave his son a homemade “sling shot” to help protect him against the German army.  He was no soft city boy going off to war, he volunteered for a new unit, they called them paratroopers promising they would jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines. They eventually became known as the 82^nd Airborne.  Their training was tough.  Their original camp was near Currahee, a mountainous area in Georgia that had an especially challenging three mile run up a mountain that now is encompassed in the Appalachian forests.   He saw combat almost his entire time in the Army.  He jumped out of a plane on D-day in Normandy, behind enemy lines like they promised winning two bronze medals, a silver star, was wounded twice and still served out the entire war.  With your permission I'll jump ahead and paint you a scene. 

It’s December 25^th, 1944.  Ford is in Bastogne, France.  The newspapers back home have started calling his unit the Battered Bastards of Bastogne because it's 83,000 of us against 250,000 of them.  The Germans are desperate because they know if they lose this one it’s over for them, yet your Commanding officer has refused to give up.  His reply when asked to surrender by a German delegation is “Nuts!”  Its bone rattling cold, the kind of cold that makes you think your teeth will shatter into a million pieces if you don’t get warm and they don’t stop chattering.  You haven’t had a hot meal in week’s maybe even months when you have anything to eat at all.  Your boots and uniforms have holes in them and the snow seeps into those holes like the sand of a beach seeps into your shoes. As a bonus you can’t build a fire to stay warm or crawl out of your foxhole as you are more than likely to be shot by an enemy sniper.  You have run out of most supplies and have no idea when new supplies are coming.  What you do have is Ford McKenzie in your unit.  On Christmas morning, Ford and a buddy crawled out of their fox hole, stealing silently through the woods with his sling shot.  That’s right his sling shot, carried for 4 years, all the way from Mississippi to France.  They eventually catch up with a chicken spotted earlier that morning which inexplicably had somehow escaped the local farmer’s pot.  Ford is as good with his sling shot as he is with his rifle and soon the bird is in hand.  Now imagine what a feast the two of you could have with this bird.  Incredible!  It would probably last you and your one buddy for several meals, but that is not how it works for these soldiers, these band of brothers.  The chicken is shared.  A small fire is risked in a foxhole.  A squad of men gathered in rag tag gear laughing, sharing a cigarette amoung them, a piece of chicken and the memories of past Christmas’ with their loved ones.  I’d like to imagine that someone may have even quietly murmured a song:

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.

I wonder now when you hear that song again if you’ll listen to the words more closely trying to imagine sitting in a foxhole with 6 or 7 buddies, huddled for warmth, claiming this is the best meal they’ve ever had, missing their families far away and yet still celebrating the peace of Christmas.  I hope you do.  Then I hope you’ll put aside all the glitz, glitter and clutter; gather your family, your friends, or your loved ones and share a simple meal celebrating the peace of Christmas.  It might just end up being the best meal you’ve ever had…..

Footnote:

Ford McKenzie made it back home eventually living in Franklin Parrish, Louisiana the rest of his life.  I’ve never met a better man. He always treated me like a hero because I served a relatively peaceful stint in the Marine Corps.   He passed several years ago living to be 79.  He never spoke of the war except once.  Ford can be seen on film at the D-day Museum in New Orleans telling this story, sharing a brief moment of a hero’s journey.  I hope someday you’ll visit this great tribute to our servicemen and women.