12/24/2025
🎄Military holiday stories told by Veterans:
Fort Jackson, SC
"I was a Private E-Nothing in Basic Training at Fort Jackson, S.C. They were closing the base down for Christmas. I had to borrow money from a friend for an airplane ticket home to Washington State.
"As I was standing in the check-in line at the airport, in my Class A uniform, it was announced that coach was overbooked, and I was scared that I would be stuck at the airport. But then the young man at the counter handed me a ticket: 'First class,' he said. I went home in first class with champagne, shrimp cocktail and chicken cordon bleu."
-- Elke, Army
Somalia, 1992
"On Dec. 9, 1992, I was deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia as Commander of the 362nd Airlift Control Element, the air operations support forces for Operation Restore Hope. Conditions were the harshest, most austere any USAF unit had experienced in decades. After more than 2 weeks of extremely limited supplies of MREs and water, resting in a bombed out aircraft hangar, using a slit trench as our latrine facility, and working nearly around the clock, a C-5 arrived delivering a field kitchen and a Pan Am 747 brought pillows, newspapers, and several cases of Coca-Cola.
"We held a brief candle-light Christmas Eve service after covering holes in the sides of the hangar to hide from the snipers. On Christmas Day afternoon, the field kitchen was operational and we had our first hot meal. Around midnight, I laid my head down on a clean fluffy pillow for a few hours of much-needed sleep. The hot meal was a luxury, but the pillow remains the best Christmas present I have ever received."
-- Robert, Air Force
Bosnia, 1997
"Christmas of 1997 was spent in Bosnia at Guardian Base. I assisted the Army Materiel Command Chaplain in conducting an Episcopal Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. After the service, I exited the chapel tent into the cold, clear Bosnian night. There was no moon, and the stars were bright. The ever-present sound of generators was conspicuously absent, as the generators near the Chapel had been turned off. As I stood in awe of the majesty of this winter night, another sound came to me. It was -- I hoped -- celebratory gunfire from the hills. Amid the joy of Christmas, I was brought back to the reality of being deployed in a hostile fire environment."
-- James, Army
