MISSING YOU

 

We want you home at Christmas

We want you to spend it with us

But we understand the reason why

And we promise to try not to cry

We will spend Christmas on our own

Until you come marching safely home

Uncanny Christmas Tales – (018) An Ardennes Christmas

 

The next time you’re whining on about what a crap Christmas you had, because your mother in law over did it on the sherry and told everyone what she really thinks about you, or when your wife’s Uncle Stan spent Christmas afternoon asleep on the sofa breaking wind with monotonous regularity, or your brother’s new girlfriend, who kept hitting on your wife or your Gran who said “just a small dinner for me I don’t have much of an appetite” then spent the afternoon eating all the chocolate Brazils.

If this strikes a chord think again and spare a thought for the half a million or so men of the allied forces and six hundred thousand Germans who spent Christmas 1944 outside in the snow of the coldest winter in a generation in the Ardennes forest during the battle of the bulge.

Men like my father sheltering in foxholes scratched out of the frozen earth with no hot food or drink, unable to light fires for fear of giving their position away and regularly coming under enemy fire or being shelled, then once you’ve hewn out a decent sized foxhole and settled down into it out of the icy wind an order comes down the line for everyone to move out and you move a hundred yards or less and dig another hole.

Go and tell your petty gripes to that generation and see if you get any sympathy.

 

IT’LL BE OVER BY CHRISTMAS

 

August 4^th 1914

The world goes mad

And the Great War Begins

The war to end all wars

“It’ll be over by Christmas”

So they promised

Instead there followed

Four years of death

THE NOT-SO-GREAT WAR

 

“Your country needs you,” said Kitchener

You’re needed to fight them over there

 “It will be over by Christmas,” they said

But it was just getting started instead

In the cold trenches on Christmas morn

The guns remained silent after the dawn

Soon forgetting the horrendous conditions

Men began emerging from their positions

The opposing soldiers met in no man’s land

Then smiled and shook their enemy’s hand

Briefly at peace both sides felt regrets

Then they exchanged gifts of cigarettes

A day without a single shot fired at all

They even got to play a game of football

Sadly, the men returned their own way

They began killing again on Boxing day