My Turn: Praying for a white Christmas
This last column for 2003 wishes all of our readers a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2004.
Unfortunately, this holiday finds American young men and women again in foreign lands protecting our security.
Most American Christmases have been peaceful, white. But people of ill will provided a few blue ones.
On Christmas Day 1916 near El Paso, Texas, Mexican snipers fired across the border into the Third Kentucky Infantry camp. No Americans were killed. American commanders restrained enlisted men from pursuing them across the border.
A week earlier J. E. Rivard wrote in Ketchikan's Progressive-Miner that Congress was bestowing a Christmas gift of money upon the Alaska towns of Juneau, Cordova, Seward, Anchorage and Fairbanks, "but poor Ketchikan must again face the cold, cold world unaided."
"The trouble with Ketchikan is that there aren't enough democrats (note the lower case d) within its limits to be reckoned with."
Valdez also wasn't on Washington's gift list. However the editor of the Valdez Prospector was generous to Anchorage, a railroad town only a few years old.
"Anchorage has coveted everything Valdez now has with the exception of the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail ... We might as well go the whole hog and give her the trail and the glacier for good measure. There is no reason for a young town to be modest in its demands."
Christmas of 1917 found our nation at war. Nineteen days earlier, Halifax, Nova Scotia was victim of a disaster that matched 9-11 and Pearl Harbor. An American freighter collided with a French munitions ship carrying 3,000 tons of TNT. The resulting explosion leveled two square miles of Halifax and killed nearly 2,000 people. Fund drives were held for the survivors. Editor Rivard castigated the Juneau Empire for its coverage.
The Empire reported that $1,287 was collected in Alaska for Halifax Christmas relief, $650 from Ketchikan, $200 from Anchorage and $437 "from other sources." The "other sources" in this case was Wrangell, which resented its new name.
On Christmas Eve, 250,000 fresh American troops were in Europe. They prepared a large Christmas tree in one of the French towns close to the front and loaded it with more than 600 presents, distributed to as many French orphans.
Twenty-four years and a day after the Halifax disaster the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. On a blue Christmas Eve, they captured Wake Island.
A front page story in the Ketchikan Chronicle: "White Christmas? Sh-h-h; It's a Military Secret. Ordinary weather forecasts over the entire United States have been banned. Such information would be of value to the enemy lurking off our coasts."
The next Christmas Eve, 1942, was not so blue. Col. E. B. Post of the Alaska Defense Command said there was no more threat to the West Coast from the Japanese base on Kiska. American troops secretly established a base in the Andreanof Islands, neutralizing Kiska.
The Chronicle again reported weather: "There was enough snow on the ground to guarantee Ketchikan one of the whitest Yuletides in 26 years."
Also, "tomorrow while families gather for Christmas dinners, the USO will entertain at least 150 troops at a dinner in the USO Hall. Members of the Girls Service Organization will hand out gifts to every man from the large Christmas tree."
The Associated Press reported on Christmas Day, 1943: "Bethlehem, blacked out by war for the last three Christmases, burst into candlelight from 10,000 windows as authorities lifted restrictions this year. Americans of all ranks, converging from their battle stations in storied Persia, Syria, Egypt and other African points thronged with other humble pilgrims to this shrine of Christianity to pay homage to the Prince of Peace."
Christmas 1944, another blue one. The German's lunched an attack on Christmas Eve across a 35-mile front. They were repulsed by American troops in the famous "Battle of the Bulge." By the next Christmas, the war was over. Troops were on their way home and by Christmas 1946 many were shopping for baby clothes.
It was back in the trenches in 1950. More than 1 million Chinese Communists were massed north of the 38th parallel for a second invasion of South Korea, expected on Christmas Eve. The assault came later. By Christmas Eve of 1951 a truce conference was centered on the exchange of prisoners.
On Christmas 1969, American troops were bogged down in Vietnam. The allied command and the Viet Cong observed cease-fires for Christmas. Soldiers in Vietnam gave Christmas parties for children at orphanages and hospitals.
The "war" in Alaska that Christmas was over wolves, prompting one editor to write: "Every time Alaska hits the national news, there is an increase in the number of job applicants from the Lower 48. We did not believe the wolf controversy would cause the same effect as the oil lease. We believed the opposite might be true - people might think Alaskans are so bloodthirsty they eat their wild meat raw and only roast their friends."
A year later at Christmas, the U.S. Command in Vietnam reported only 23 Americans were killed in action the last week, but 44,167 had been killed since New Years Day 1961. By Christmas 1972, American troops were home or headed home.
Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army invaded Kuwait in 1990. The United States military and other United Nations forces waited until three weeks after Christmas to oust Saddam, which took only a month and a half.
Christmas 2003 finds American troops in Iraq, probably again feeding orphans, after 12 years of futile debate with Saddam about observing terms of the '91 truce.
Merry Christmas to American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, Bosnia and on other foreign posts striving for peace on Earth.
May God speed them home in 2004 for a white Christmas, which, thanks to them and their predecessors, American newspapers are free to report.