Christmas in a Vietnamese Jungle

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

My Uncle has always been a role model for me. He was only 13 years old the year I was born so he seemed more like a brother to me than anything else. He volunteered to serve in the Army when he was 18 years old and became a paratrooper that same year. He was sent to Viet Nam in the early part of the war and I remember well how much my grandparents looked forward to each letter that he would send and how they would read them aloud at the kitchen table.

The stories he told about his friends and what they were doing always excited something in me and it was no surprise that when I was old enough I also joined the Army and became a paratrooper as well, emulating a man I looked up to my entire life. He has served as an inspiration to me, his honesty, loyalty, work ethic and character were unsurpassed and in the years since his retirement as a Federal agent he bought a ranch and has lived a lifestyle I admire and respect. He reads everything I write and always has kind words for my work.

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The other day he sent me a piece he had written recently for a local publication in his area that wanted stories about Christmas. The published it and he sent me the first piece of his writing I have seen since 1968. I thought it was deeply moving and would be appreciated by the readers here:

I have enjoyed many beautiful and heartfelt Christmases but one stands out as my most memorable. It was 1967 and I was a 20-year-old paratrooper serving in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP). In December, our LLRP teams were conducting seven-day missions in the rugged rainforest mountains along the borders of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Our team’s survival depended on complete stealth.

At first light on December 24, our six-man team was inserted by helicopter into this mountainous region. We spent the day patrolling through the jungle and stopped just prior to dark, settling in the thick jungle bush for a long Christmas Eve night.

During the long jungle nights, the six of would sit back-to-back, huddled like a covey of quail. Verbal communications were mouth-to-ear in a very hushed whisper. Few words were spoken that Christmas Eve night, but we all had our thoughts of childhood Christmas memories.

The oldest team member was 22-year-old team leader, Donald Waide. In an airborne brigade filled with courageous men, Waide, of Clayton, N.M., was arguably the most daring and courageous paratrooper. Team members would follow him anywhere.

Prior to absolute darkness settling in, I observed Waide encoding an unusually long message to be transmitted back to our forward base camp more than 70 miles away. When I read the message Christmas morning, I saw that he had transmitted Clement Moore’s entire poem, “The Night Before Christmas.”

Prior to moving out Christmas morning, I used our surveillance camera to take a photograph of Don holding up a Merry Christmas greeting to his mother. That was Don’s last Christmas. He was killed in action on May 7, 1968.

Although it has been 47 years since that unique and memorable Christmas, whenever I look at the photograph of Don taken that morning, a smile automatically appears on my face.

Irvin W. Moran, Green Bay