CHRISTMAS: I Won’t Be Home for the Holidays

For Travelers, there is inevitably a moment when the exhilaration of discovery gives way to an acute sense of being a stranger in a very foreign place. As soldiers, diplomats and foreign correspondents know, that sense of displacement may be keenest at times of traditional togetherness and homecoming. Here, current and former foreign correspondents share some of their most memorable Christmases away from home.

VIETNAM, 1967

I planned to spend my third Christmas in Vietnam with American troops near the Demilitarized Zone, expecting simply to share their C rations and stoicism.

On this reporting trip I wasn’t looking for much in the way of holiday spirit: Grunts weren’t given to much sentiment in that very dangerous part of the world. And the place I landed didn’t appear to offer much. It had no name, just a forward outpost called C-1, in the sandy terrain north of Leatherneck Square--hard by the minefields and foxholes of the DMZ.

Earlier in Con Thien--the corner of Leatherneck Square and target for shells from North Vietnam--I heard that an overnight cease-fire might be honored, and that South Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky would pay a visit.

The Marines, however, were skeptical. Sgt. Stephen Newcomb told me he was planning to stay inside his bunker, ready to fire back if necessary. On his sandbags was the sign: “Noel.”

At C-1, as the tropic sun swiftly fell behind the jagged Annamite Range, stars blossomed in a cool, black sky. In the unaccustomed quiet, I could hear faint sounds of surf from the South China Sea.

It was one of those moments when you realized just how lovely that battered and forlorn country really was.

During the evening, Marshal Ky choppered in. He was joined by Vietnamese troops and a busload of choir girls, in flowing ao dais , from the city of Hue. The grunts had already downed their C’s, but Ky’s aides brought in beer and Scotch to go with a Vietnamese banquet--and invited everyone to dinner after Mass.

Meanwhile, soldiers had decorated surrounding barbed wire with colored bunting and affixed paper stars to the tops of sandbagged bunkers. The mood at C-1 had shifted from anxiety to gaiety.

Just before midnight, the strains of “Silent Night” issued from a tape recorder, and a Vietnamese chaplain celebrated midnight Mass--the responses coming from the choir.

About 80 Vietnamese and 20 American soldiers knelt before the chaplain, Capt. Nguyen Van Trinh, to receive Communion.

I’ve subsequently been to Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s, but this was more affecting: the mood warm and intimate, the lively scene illuminated by orange flares launched by Marines in Dong Ha to the south, the cease-fire holding.

After Mass, a 23-year-old soldier-communicant named Robert Drewek--with that mixture of reverence and saltiness common to GIs--told me: “This Mass sure as hell made my Christmas. It was something special--to think they could do it way out here, near No Man’s Land.”

As the post-Mass celebration began and GIs broke into a chorus of “Jingle Bells,” Father Trinh looked reflectively around and said to me: “This is the way it should be in my country. No guns. No shooting. No war.”

Sadly, it would be a long time before the padre got his Christmas wish.