By NORMAN M. COVERT
The Covert Letter sends Christmas and New Year wishes to our faithful readers. I’m sure you agree that special greetings are due our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Coast Guardsmen serving far away from their families. Christmas for these uniformed patriots is still “Duty, Honor, Country,” in the words of the late General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
Packages from home are terrific, but you can’t beat being at the fireside with your loved ones.
Author on assignment in Korea March 1971, the Han River (background) marking the demarcation line with bridge to the so-called Freedom Village.
The majority of our troops may have come home from Iraq in November and December, but many Americans, including one of my own, are still there. Sunni and Shiite bombs wreck its people, streets and government buildings daily; the fragile government becoming more unstable as days pass.
May God keep our kinsmen in the palm of His hand!
The Afghanistan/Pakistan Theater continues to take its toll on our warriors. I wonder if we will see a victorious end to this quagmire of political and military turmoil. Again, we pray God’s protection for family and friends in those dangerous Forward Operating Bases (FOB).
Army and Air National Guard troops are still in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Other troops remain armed and at their posts in South Korea from the DMZ south to Pusan. Tensions are high this Christmas with the death of North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il (see: Kim Il Song).
Legends abound telling of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day truces at the battlefront. These include the true World War I account of an impromptu ceasefire and exchange of personal items. German and Allied soldiers made it happen in no-man’s land between the trenches in France and Belgium.
The story is told on good authority that Walter C. J. Wev, a bugler with the 16th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, gave an impromptu concert of carols on Christmas Eve 1862. Col. Carnot Posey’s 16th Infantry was encamped on the Rapidan River near Chancellorsville, Va., where federal troops on the opposite bank requested he play so they also could hear. My great-great-grandfather agreed and moved closer to the shore line.
My weapon card from Headquarters Company, 237th. Armorer had trouble spelling "Covert." It was in the middle rack, slot 11B, M-14 rifle No. 400462.
Christmas conjures memories of my military service in the Federal Republic of Germany (1968-69). I was a Chaplain’s assistant at Wharton Barracks, Heilbronn, Germany, assigned to the 237th Combat Engineer Battalion, VII US Army Corps.
Author with German Benedictine Monk Pr. Andreas Michalski at abbey, Bad Wimpfen im tal, Germany, 1968.
Christmas meant assisting Presbyterian Chaplain Maj. Richard George, Roman Catholic Chaplain Maj. Thomas J. Confroy and German Pr. Andrea Michalski (O.S.B.).
I was the weapons carrier (M-14 rifle) as well as resident organist and choir director for the military community chapel. My duties included ensuring preparations for all services. Transportation was arranged for Jewish soldiers taking part in Hanukkah activities at Robinson Barracks, Stuttgart.
View toward Choir Loft of Chapel, 2007, now a Coptic Christian Reformed Church. Author played role in obtaining stained glass windows shown.
My first Christmas Eve was decorated with a good-sized snow fall. All was quiet in the Casern with families celebrating in quarters and many soldiers celebrating together in G.I. Gasthofs. It was indeed a “Silent Night, Holy Night.”
Wharton Barracks Chapel was lighted inside by a small lamp in the choir loft, where I marked time until Midnight Mass. I played carols and other music that were traditions in my home church. Christmas memories came in a flood, undoubtedly mirrored this year in so many of our military members.
Christmas Eve ruminations recalled buddies who had been summarily shipped from the 237th to Military Assistance Command (Vietnam) (MACV). The war had taken a turn for the worse and it had priority. In Germany, we were short handed. Resupply problems hampered our ability to keep vehicles and equipment up to readiness standards. Spare parts were going to Southeast Asia. My Ford Jeep’s sparkplugs came from a German store.
Russian t-62 Main Battle Tank maneuvers on streets of Prague as freedom fighters cause havoc with Molotov Cocktails in background. (GUARDIAN Image)
We spent most of 1968 training on the Rhine River and at Grafenwohr, Hohenfels and Wildflecken. The coming of September saw my unit ”locked and loaded” on the German side of the Danube river, where a nearby village still lay in ruins from World War II fighting. Austria was south of our fighting position.
We were alerted because the Soviet Union boldly sent a force of T-62 Main Battle tanks into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic August 21, 1968. Their purpose was to defeat a determined force of freedom fighters, who sought to overthrow President Ludwik Svoboda and the Communist government.
Our mission was to be the first line of defense for West Germany should Soviet leaders seek to expand their success in Czechoslovakia. Sadly for the Czech people, Soviet military might snuffed the uprising.
We were ordered back to garrison at Heilbronn-am-Neckar, aware that our 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment could see Eastern Bloc forces massed on the eastern opening in the Fulda Gap in anticipation of a “GO” order.
In the face of such tensions, soldiers doffed fatigues that Christmas Eve in favor of civilian attire, temporarily escaping the reality of their mission as defenders of freedom.
Christmas Day for me meant getting back into fatigues and combat boots, driving Chaplain Confroy to the outlying Nike missile sites. He offered Christmas Mass for the troops, who were sequestered in high security garrisons. It was a blessing for the son of a Church of God minister to serve as Altar Boy at these masses.
The 237th was disestablished March 15, 1992, almost one year after its gallant service in Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. Transfer of the historic Casern ensued to Baden-Württemberg government. Only the chapel and my former barrack remain.
William A. (Bill) Kennedy, Sr., shared a 1944 V-Mail Christmas card he sent from Kunming, China to his widowed mother. The post card was unique for soldiers in the China, Burma, India (CBI) Theater of Operations. It depicts a soldier clutching his Garand rifle and thinking of home. The scene was replicated many times that momentous year, which saw victory in Europe in May 1945 and victory in Japan in August 1945.
We have lost thousands on the battlefields of history and many still have not been accounted for by the Department of Defense. Repatriation of remains continues and we pray the families of these unknown warriors will soon achieve some closure.
Coming home for Christmas 2012 should be a goal, but our troops deserve to come home to victory parades.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all –©Norman M. Covert, 2011.
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Mr. Covert may be contacted at nmcovert@thecovertletter.com or nmcovert77@aol.com
A fine and thoughfull letter. It did bring to the front memories of times that I spent at sea off the coast of Vietman.Jim Beckman