Christmas Night – Day 58
Greetings family, friends and interested readers,
For thousands of years, people of various cultures have opted to take a break from their daily toil of surviving or earning a living in order to celebrate a holiday or feast. Whether it was a good harvest, a significant birth or death, a peace treaty or a religious event, the participants could usually count on the celebrations and traditions to lift their spirits, strengthen family or national bonds, properly acknowledge the original event and help them to forget about their troubles if only for a few hours. Those same end results can also be achieved by soldiers. Having had firsthand experience with 2 tours in Iraq and having visited now more than 15 operating bases in Afghanistan, I can attest that holidays are good for personnel in war zones as well.
When I arrived at my first duty station here on October 31st, pumpkins and other Halloween decorations were on display in the dining room, recreation areas and some offices. Several personnel added costume accessories to their uniforms and scary films were being shown in the movie room. The little kid in most of us raided the candy dishes at many workstations and I can report that I acquired a sufficient quantity of candy corn.
Our Veteran’s Day observance was simple and dignified with many military personnel thanking each other for their service. Thanksgiving here could be described as one part work, one part late-night football due to the 9.5 hour time difference, one part communicating with family and two parts eating. The banquet with all the trimmings was served by the high ranking officers both at midday and again in the evening for the night shift group with most of us going to both sittings and eating too much. The Catholic community asked me to celebrate Mass in the afternoon which was good for spiritual exercise and burning a few of those extra calories.
Before the big meal was fully digested, sights and sounds of the approaching Christmas season were popping up across the landscape. At some of the bases there were artificial and real Christmas trees sent from the States, inflatable snowmen and Santas with reindeer and a sleigh, twinkling lights, holiday sales in the market stores, wreathes, garland, baked goods and candy sent from home, Santa caps and Christmas stockings galore. My favorite sight has been the fake fireplace in a morale break area containing a large flat screen television playing a video of the burning Yule log accompanied by Christmas carols. Soldiers could grab a cup of hot chocolate and stare at the fire recalling Christmas celebrations of years past while forgetting for a few minutes that they were in a war zone.
Other holiday options at various bases for the troops in their off-duty hours included: a couple of 5 kilometer jingle bell group runs around the base, caroling, a decorated vehicle parade, a basketball tournament, shopping for gifts on-line, Christmas bingo, phone calls and live video chats with loved ones, gift opening (most soldiers didn’t wait till the big day), office parties, the holiday banquet, a Christmas Eve candlelight service and other worship services.
Army regulations state that chapels must remain religion-neutral when not in use by a particular faith group so, although the chapels look quite plain and are places for solitude most hours of the week, on December 24 & 25, they became vibrantly alive with worshipers praying and singing about the real reason for the holiday season. Here in the south, while one priest covered the 4 Masses around the main base, another priest and I each traveled to 6 combat outposts on our own helicopters to celebrate Christmas Mass with the troops.
On my helicopter, the forward gunner had a bright blinking red nose while the tail gunner wore a red suit and had a white beard. It must have been quite a sight to the local villages that we flew over. I regret that there were several dozen other operating bases that we could not get to for Mass on December 24th or 25th but weather and security concerns permitting, we hope to reach some of them during the 12 days of Christmas.
The presence of troops from many NATO countries at the large base where I recently moved to in Kandahar, has added an international flair to this holiday with people also having the option of attending the Slovak or Romanian chapel services. And while all of that was going on, our Jewish personnel were celebrating Hanukkah with the Rabbi. It has been an uplifting, mostly traditional, memorable holiday with special thanks going out to the USO, the care-package sending folks back home and the Postal units who worked as hard as Santa even on Christmas Day. I am not sure what the Afghans think about all this since Afghanistan is predominantly a Muslim country but they must be getting use to it after 10 years of coalition troops being here and the country interacting more with the outside world. The poor people who scavenge at the local dump certainly like it for they find all sorts of treasure and useful items among the things the troops discard.
In addition to offering Mass at the forward operating bases and combat outposts I go out to visit each week, there is usually some time to mingle with the soldiers. Once a helicopter or an armored vehicle convoy drops me off at a base, I usually check in at the operations center to get a threat update, set a time for services, and finalize my travel arrangements to get to the next base later that day or the next. If the base is one of the larger ones, there may be a Protestant chaplain there to meet with and a designated chapel tent or building to use for services. At the smaller outposts, I use the dining tent or conference tent for services and try to be more available to the soldiers whose regular chaplain may only get to visit them once every 2 or 3 weeks. In order to greet the soldiers and let them know I am around, I walk through the common areas of the base and volunteer to be a server on the chow line.
Recently 2 hours after offering Mass on a combat outpost at 8pm, a platoon of soldiers returned from a 24 hour patrolling tour in armored vehicles. Several of them wanted to attend Mass so I set up to celebrate another one for them. Since they looked exhausted, I offered to shorten the celebration by not singing hymns and giving just a summary of my sermon but they insisted on the full Mass, explaining that I was the first priest they met here since arriving 8 months ago.
Since quite a few of our troops now back up the Afghan National Army in patrolling areas to provide security, many of our bases have a separate section where the Afghan soldiers are housed. There is even an Afghan private security force that staffs some of our guard towers, thus freeing up our more skilled and better equipped American soldiers to deal with the bad guys and assist the locals with development projects.
One day I stopped up in a guard tower for a visit and was surprised to find an Afghan guard paging through a Playboy magazine. I noticed it was this month’s edition and concluded that since he could not read English, he did not have the magazine open to check out the articles.
In another guard tower, the Afghans invited me to share some of their lunch. To show how much I enjoyed the goat and rice, I cleaned my plate of every morsel only to learn later of my cultural blunder. If you finish everything on your plate, it means your host did not provide enough food for you and he must go get you more. It is thus proper then to leave some food on your plate as a sign that the host provided more than enough for you. Being able to leave food on my plate would have been a great custom to have in my house when I was growing up.
As the sun continues to set on this Christmas day around the globe, I am reminded of another Christmas time in a war zone back in 1914 described by Victor Parachin. British troops on the Western Front in Europe were living and dying in trenches while shooting at German troops who were also shooting back and living and dying in trenches a short distance away. On the night of December 24th, the darkness and cold weather had slowed the fighting. The German troops began to sing softly and hold up candles and Christmas trees. Even though this revealed their position, the British troops were too amazed at the sight and the sound to fire upon them. Soon the British forces, not understanding the German words, recognized the tune as that of “Silent Night” and began to also sing the song in English. Before long, soldiers from each side put down their weapons, climbed out of their muddy trenches and moved toward each other through the barbed-wire no-man’s land separating them. They shared greetings, some gifts, and photos of their families in an event that became known as a Christmas truce. It is my hope that Christmas truces may become more popular all around the world and last much longer than a day.
As my second month is this country comes to an end, I continue to be moved by the dedication, professionalism and courage of our military personnel. Recognizing that, for soldiers, long hours, limited freedom to do what one wants, distance from loved ones and friends, a lack of privacy, discomfort, cold dusty weather, loneliness and the possibility of a rocket attack at any time could easily cause a person to lose heart, become disillusioned or depressed, it is beneficial in many ways to observe joy-filled events and traditions here. Thus I again declare that holidays are good for war zones and I need to make sure we have some chocolate hearts, green shamrocks and Easter egg coloring kits for the months ahead.
Please remember our troops, especially the injured, in a prayer. I wish you and those special to you a blessed holiday season and the best of everything in the New Year!
CH Jim Krische
