Christmas Past: Troops Who Spent the Holiday at War

Through history, many Americans have been overseas on December 25, fighting for our freedom

a christmas tree in vietnam with two soldiers

A Christmas tree brightens the 'home sweet home' of a couple of GI's at Ka Tum in Vietnam. But instead of wrapping gifts, Charles Pappas (left) of Westland, Michigan, and Delbert Lamb of Rome, Ohio, are busy cleaning their weapons.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Alexandra Frost,

AARP Veteran Report

Published December 22, 2022

Every year, many members of the military spend Christmas overseas serving their country. Some find themselves in combat or as captives while those they are fighting for enjoy the holidays at home:

Getty Images/AARP

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Revolutionary War

Gen. George Washington and his troops spent Christmas of 1776 crossing a freezing river to launch a surprise attack on an enemy outpost in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington had decided to seize back the initiative after a string of defeats, including the loss of New York City. The crossing of the Delaware began at 11 p.m., and the weather was so severe that two men froze to death during the night.

After completing the crossing, Washington’s 2,400 troops marched for four hours to reach Trenton before dawn. The battle was a rout in which most of the roughly 1,380 enemy soldiers were captured.

World War I

In 1914, three years before the United States entered the war, the Christmas Truce marked what one British veteran described as a “unique and weird Christmas Day.” The British heard Germans singing on Christmas Eve, and a voice called them to meet halfway through No Man’s Land, the middle ground separating the trenches. For one night, the fighting stopped.

Men were chatting, laughing, smoking, playing sports and drinking together. The dead and wounded were collected without the threat of attack. Gifts of tobacco, alcohol, food and even buttons were exchanged. There were reports of soccer matches between opposing forces and enemies singing “Auld Lang Syne” together.

World War II

In 1944, the Bartolo brothers of Grove City, Pennsylvania, spent Christmas Day fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Only one of them survived. The job of Ray Bartolo, 21, was to lay telephone wires between the front lines and the headquarters back to the gun emplacements while Eddie, 19, was an infantryman. Eddie was wounded on Dec. 25 and died a week later.

Eddie’s death devastated the brothers’ parents. “From 1946, until my daughter was 2 years old [in 1957], my mother never had a Christmas tree in the house because my brother was wounded on Christmas Day, and he died on New Year’s Day,” Ray recalled.

“When I left for the service, my dad’s hair was as black as coal,” Ray said. “This was just three years later, but his hair was white as snow — mainly from losing my brother Eddie.”

Vietnam War

U.S. Air Force pilot Ted Ballard spent seven Christmases as a POW after his F-105 Thunderchief was shot down over North Vietnam. In 1966, he had been in captivity for nearly three months, and he and his cellmate, Navy pilot George McSwain, had endured torture and beatings.

On Christmas Eve, while McSwain was being interrogated, Ballard decided that his “Christmas present” to himself would be to walk without crutches. “When George returned he had a few pieces of sugar candy and a cigarette for each of us,” Ballard recalled. “This was a pleasant surprise since I never thought the Vietnamese would recognize Christmas.”

He said, “Later some Christmas music was played over the camp radio. A POW sang two or three songs. I wondered who he was but never did find out. It was a sad Christmas Eve for me.” The next day, the North Vietnamese gave the POWs what Ballard considered “a good Christmas dinner — a piece of meat, lots of rice, and, for the first time, cabbage soup.”

Iraq War

In 2006, Dustin Kirby, a Navy corpsman, was on a rooftop at Outpost Omar, near Fallujah, when a sniper’s bullet tore through his jaw, taking seven of his teeth and fracturing his jawbone and part of his skull.

The 22-year-old corpsman refused to allow his Marines to carry him to the medevac and performed an emergency tracheotomy on himself by slicing open his neck with the tip of a Ka-Bar knife to open an airway so he could breathe. Kirby underwent 32 medical procedures and was left with a 14-inch metal plate holding his jaw together.

In October 2016, Kirby’s new dental implants and teeth meant he was able to smile again. Two months later, the father of four daughters said, “Without question, this will be the best Christmas I’ll have since that day. Even though there will always be a dark cloud for me during Christmas, I’ll finally be able to smile for my kids.”