This Was Their Blackest Christmas Overseas

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 304, 24 December 1945, Page 4

This Was Their Blackest Christmas Overseas

'"lITHAT was your blackest Christ " mas overseas?"

This was the question put to a number of returned servicemen approached at random in the City. The answers indicated that the majority had experienced grim Christmases either while prisoners of war or in the line. But the striking feature was that all ■ the men chose to make light of wartime hardships, and preferred to recall the brighter aspects of Army life.

One man, who lost a leg at Rimini in 1944 and spent Christmas of that year in hospital, said he "supposed that was his blackest Christmas, but, looking back, we had a jolly good time."

A former sergeant in the 24th Battalion, taken prisoner in Greece, said he had forgotten all his black Christmases.

The following paragraphs show how members of the three Services answered the question, "What was your blackest Christmas?"—

Corporal C. W. O'Sullivan (24th Battalion): "My third Christmas overseas was black and gritty. The

.old two-four battalion stopped chas-. ing Rommel at Nofolia, near Tripoli. We stopped for dinner in the desert. All our promised beer had been sunk in Bengasi harbour. Ask yourself! Just boosted-up rations in a semi-dust storm. Add to that the fact that the old battalion had been cruelly depleted by heavy casualties—scores of good types missing. It was just another day, with poignant thoughts of home."

Corporal Geoff. Fahey (24th Battalion): "I had three of my four Christmases overseas 'in the bag.' My blackest was the first as a prisoner of war. That was in Italy. We knew it was Christmas because we had a ten-pound Red Cross parcel each. We had nothing else. Only the big prospect of a long period in captivity. We had been terribly hungry for weeks—just a period of starvation. The Red Cross parcel made the Christmas bearable. We knew, too, that there would be more semi-starvation to follow. Things were pretty grim."

Corporal E. R. Booth (Div. Signals, Third Echelon): "My blackest Christmas was a white Christmas, and apart from the intense cold there was nothing very grim about

>it except that we could not get any 'vino.' I'm speaking of Christmas, 1944, after I had returned from my furlough in New Zealand and we were at Faenza at the foot of the Apennines and our truck was frozen, preventing us from bringing in the Christmas cheer. Jerry was not far away and his artillery was active." Sapper Merv. Waugh (7th Field Coy.): "I was in Stalag 344 working in a paper factory last Christmas. There wasn't much food—the Red Cross parcels had petered out—but we killed a goose and got rid of its innards by wrapping them in paper. We had some home brew, too, made out of raisins in a rusty tin. We needed it. There was two feet of snow outside. The Yank bombers kept on chasing us out. They were striking at a synthetic oil refinery close by and aiming at the smoke. The prevailing wind used to blow the smoke towards us. I was with a chap called George McLean, of Christchurch, at the time. He found a church in Crackaw, Poland, which hadn't been looted. There was a visitors' book in it and on one special page Hitler, Himmler. Goering and Goebbels had signed their names. George signed his underneath."