Well, few are visiting EA today. I guess it is a holiday of sorts, so I won’t take it personally. As a thank-you to those who do drop by, here is a post I encountered on the new substack, “Ramparts.” “War and Christmas:Christmas and the enduring spirit of Freedom” focuses on two important and inspiring Christmases in our nation’s history, both occurring while the nation was at war.
The second has special significance for me. My father, Jack Anderson Marshall, Sr., fought on thatChristmas day in 1944, having just been released from the Army hospital after having half his foot blown off earlier in the year, before D-Day. After my parents moved from Arlington, Mass. to Arlington, Virginia, I would accompany my father every year around this time on his pilgrimage to the Battle of the Bulge veterans memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, just a short walk from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The year he died on my birthday in 2009, Dad had skipped the reunion of BOTB veterans for the first time. The dwindling numbers made him too sad, he said.
Ethics Alarms 
My uncle was at the Bulge. It had a deep and profound effect on him. We owe them all a debt.
For all those leveling accusations at each other about being Nazis and fascists they would not have lasted 20 minutes in the Ardennes, Anzio or on Omaha Beach. They have diluted the meaning of those terms so much the words ring hollow anymore.
I believe that this is the most important time of the year to turn our thoughts to those who came before us who battled evil and died so that so many more of us can live in relative safety. In many ways they gave their lives for us just as another did 2000 years ago
I am just glad my uncle (The Bulge) and grandfather (Anzio) are long gone and do not have to see how so many have squandered that for which they bled and died.
The evident peace and lack of regrets, as well as sense of acceptance of all that might be in store, good or ill, was apparent in my father my whole life knowing him. And it was because, I believe, that he knew his service in WWII meant that he had already led a meaningful and successful life. Everything else was a bonus, including waking up each day. It was why he made his family’s happiness and welfare his priority and focus—beyond that, he had no overriding ambitions or goals he needed to fulfill. He had played a meaningful role in the greatest conflict between Good and Evil of his and any other generation.
Our dear friend, “Red” Andrews (died in 2017 at the age of 96) was also at the Battle of the Bulge, where he was wounded. He was sent to England, fell in love with one of his nurses, married her, and eventually brought her with him to live in the US. Her wedding dress was made from a parachute. Red had a storied life, that only his family and friends knew well.
As a high school track star, he got personal starting line tips from Jesse Owens (!) and treasured the signed photo Owens gave him.
Red was a young lieutenant in the 101st Airborne at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. He stayed in the Army after the war, and was fighting in Korea when he was trapped behind enemy lines. A Korean family hid him in their attic at the risk of their own lives while.Chinese troops briefly occupied their house. After the Chinese troops left, he somehow managed to find his way back through enemy lines and rejoin American troops (though not his unit).
We traveled with him and his entire family to Bastogne for “anniversaries” (twice for me, thrice for Maureen). At Bastogne, the aging veterans were treated like celebrities. We were there when Red was chosen to be the veteran throwing nuts from the Mayoral balcony to the crowds below, in honor of General Mcauliffe’s famous rejoinder to the nazis. We experienced visits to the family in whose home Red was headquartered during the battle. They clearly loved him deeply. We were there when the King and Queen of Belgium visited personally with each veteran, while our President sent a third-tier DoD representative for a short speech , we visited families who had been active in resisting the Germans, we visited the forest where you can still see the vestiges of trenches, and Red visited schools where young children treated him like a super hero. A quiet, modest true gentleman, be was chosen to assist the Macauley family representative (granddaughter if I recall correctly) in laying the wreath at the Mcauley monument. It was quite moving. The last time he and his family attended the anniversary, Nancy Pelosi reportedly insisted on pre-empting the family and laying the wreath herself, in a ceremony that her “team” reportedly delayed while 90+ year old veterans stood in the cold.
When Red died, his obituary was translated and carried in Belgian newspapers. Local “Bastognians” still stay in touch with Red’s family.
Is it any wonder that people like your Dad and Red are known as “the greatest generation.” ( And if you want to read about Maureen’s “Uncle Charlie’s”exploits in the Pacific, read “Black Dragon,” in which Charlie Ahern, actually her Dad’s first cousin, is prominently featured)
Thirty-odd years ago, just before Christmas, I was talking to the elderly janitor for the administrative area of our county jail, about the cold weather we were experiencing. He remarked, “I’ll never again be as cold as I was on Christmas at Bastogne in 1944.” I think I said something lame like, “Wow! You were in the Battle of the Bulge?”
We spent the next half-hour talking about his experiences in WW2 as a member of the 101st Airborne Division, at the BOTB and elsewhere. He was very humble about his individual role, but very proud of his unit and its accomplishments in the war. He worked for us until he was eighty (he had already retired from two previous jobs), retiring from the county in 2000. All of our deputies thought the world of the guy; he was like everyone’s grandfather. A number of our officers, me included, visited him regularly after he retired. He stayed mentally sharp until the very end; his heart gave out when he was 87. RIP, Mr. Ensley, and all the other guys who spent the Christmas of 1944 with him in the frigid snowy woods of Bastogne.