This holiday season the wars in Syria and Afghanistan are much in the news, yet to us at home, war seems a long way off. In many ways it is, yet for veterans, its memories still live close by. This Christmas Eve is a case in point.
Forty nine years ago, I was with the First Infantry Division (the Big Red One) in Vietnam, operating between Saigon and Cambodia. About noon on Christmas Eve we had been “choppered” back to our base camp from “reconnaissance in force” operations and were looking forward to the night off. Late that afternoon, orders came to “hook up” and off we went to the chopper pad. Then orders were changed, and the mission cancelled. Happiness. Then orders were revived, and back to the chopper pad. Changed again. Happiness. Then back again to the chopper pad. And this time, off we went, our target a suspected Viet Cong base camp that according to intelligence reports, was going to rocket an Army artillery fire support base to be visited by Vice President Spiro Agnew.
We were pretty cynical and ticked off because due to the delays, it was getting dark, and we wouldn’t have time to move out into the jungle and get cover. As a result, the helicopters inserted us close by a small hammock of trees in the midst of a wide open area, formerly rice fields. Here in the South Carolina Lowcountry you’ve seen something like that — a small clump of trees amidst a wide expanse of open marsh.
Numbering 15 or 20, we set up positions in the hammock. We knew the Viet Cong had both heard and seen us coming in and knew exactly where we were and how few we were. We thought we’d get mortared and then hit hard that night. It was the dry season, as it would have been in Bethlehem, so the air was thin, and the sky ablaze with the Milky Way arcing across the heavens. We thought it might be our last.
Fortunately, the VC didn’t attack, and the next morning we made it safely across the old rice fields and into the jungle, and after a few days and not finding the base camp, we were choppered out.
It is said that the past is dead, but it is not, for now that we’re back home, our platoon leader, Mike Cooke, who lives in North Carolina, goes out in the woods behind his house every Christmas Eve and sits with his rifle for an hour. He remembers the fear and esprit de corps we had, the killing we were ready to do, and the beauty and the silence of that night. He remembers, as do I, our friends-in-arms who made it back alive, and those who didn’t.
This Christmas Eve I know there are soldiers in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere who are out in harm’s way, being yanked around but doing their duty, and wondering if they’ll make it back, and 49 years from now, I hope they will be alive to remember this Christmas Eve and their time together.
– George McDaniel
George W. McDaniel, Ph.D., is President of McDaniel Consulting, LLC, a strategy firm that helps organizations use history to build bridges within itself and to its broader constituents. The company’s tag line, “Building Bridges through History,” is grounded in McDaniel’s personal beliefs and his experience in site management, preservation, education, board development, fundraising, and community outreach. Rather than using history to divide us, he strives to help organizations use history, especially local history, to enhance cross-cultural understanding and to support local museums, preservation, and education. Dr. McDaniel recently led volunteer efforts with Emanuel AME Church and historical organizations in Charleston to use historic preservation to enhance racial reconciliation and healing. McDaniel is also the Executive Director Emeritus of Drayton Hall, a historic site in Charleston, SC, owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
A frequent writer, speaker, and facilitator about such issues, he can be reached at gmcdaniel4444@gmail.com or through his website at www.mcdanielconsulting.net.
Header Image: Photo of the Milky Way and Shooting Star: Guillaume le Louarn on U
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McDaniel Consulting LLC is a strategy firm that helps organizations use history to build bridges within itself and its broader constituents.