Christmas at Cu Chi
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- November
- 8
Like Ed Frank, most Vietnam veterans I’ve talked to have interesting birthday/holiday stories about the war. Dan Griffin, executive director of Westchester County’s Vietnam Veterans of America, has a good one about a light-up Christmas tree his family sent him, which soldiers took turns looking at on Christmas Eve by going into a muddy foxhole, one by one. (The light would have alerted the Viet Cong to their position.) He gave the tree to a random helicopter pilot resupplying them on Christmas Day; decades later, he found the pilot again when the guy randomly shared the story at a veterans’ event!
My father had been in Vietnam for nine months when he “celebrated” Christmas at Cu Chi. His sister sent him three miniature Santa Claus figures and a small tree, which he put on top of his desk at the 25th Infantry Division’s Lightning Replacements School.
It wasn’t much of a Merry Christmas, of course. Click the audio link below to hear the letter my father wrote to a friend, describing his feelings about observing the holiday while fighting in the Vietnam War.
[...] A veteran, his daughter, their journey « Christmas at Cu Chi [...]
Between the birthday cake and Xmas food, I never got anything that wasn’t in multiple pieces… remember the C-130s or 119s…. they’d open their ramps and skids would slide onto the PSP runway and the planes would taxi, U-turn and take off w/out stopping. Then you found out that most food was originally sent by water… my buddies sent pizza from the neighborhood that would have green fuzz on the edges after 30+ days at sea… still worth fighting over to get a slice. My neighbor, Mrs. Natale sent me pastelles and she did something special to the to make them chewy so they were the star attraction at Xmas ‘67. And, as I remember, 33% of our daily discourse revolved around food… My whole team loved Mrs. Natale.