Frank Watson: A Christmas to Remember

I am getting to the age where young folks ask me about my best and most memorable Christmas.

They are not the same.

My most memorable one wasn’t my best, but it is the one I think of most often.

I had completed Air Force Flight Training and was assigned to an air refueling crew at Fairchild Air Force Base.

After a few short months, our crew was notified that we would depart in mid-December for a short tour in Southeast Asia as part of the Vietnam conflict.

We were excited and anticipating a great adventure.

We hadn’t yet discovered that war is only glamorous if you are looking forward to it or reminiscing.

It was early enough in the war that friends and families saw us off as we boarded the plane.

I was at the bottom of the loading ramp when a young woman came running up struggling with an eight foot evergreen tree.

She asked if I would take it to her husband in Okinawa.

I said I would.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Our route across the Pacific was in four overnight legs.

We spent our first night at a base in southern California, the second night in Hawaii, and the third in Guam before we arrived at our final stop in Okinawa.

As I was the junior officer on our crew, I was in charge of lugging the tree to our room, stowing it away, then lugging it back to a different plane for each leg of our trip.

As you can imagine, it got pretty shopworn.

The tree’s intended owner had deployed forward, so the tree stayed in our quarters drying out while we flew several missions.

We were sent forward to Utapao, Thailand on December 22.

The grapevine was alive and well.

The tree’s owner met us as we landed and relieved me of the poor bedraggled tree.

I ate dinner that evening in the Officer’s Club and noticed the young Thai waitresses giggling as they tried to set up the tree. By the next day, the tree had been transformed. The club staff had made decorations out of scraps of paper and tin can lids. Some were quite beautiful. There were some three dimensional round ornaments, several angels and an ample number of icicles. No one questioned the propriety of having our Christmas tree decorated by Buddhists. As far as I know, it was the only Christmas tree in the war zone. On Christmas morning, one of the Air Force Chaplains conducted a worship service in front of the tree.

I stayed after worship for my Christmas dinner. The club was serving the same fare that we had been eating since arrival, cheeseburgers. I wanted something a bit different, so I asked for a plain hamburger smothered in grilled onions. The same waitress who had lovingly decorated our tree didn’t speak enough English to modify my order. She could ask if I wanted fries, but it came out as “flench flies.” I was a little short on time, so I soon gave up and ate my cheeseburger without “flies”. I then hurried over to flight ops to join my crew for our afternoon mission briefing.

We have young men and women deployed overseas this Christmas. There is nothing we can do to make it the same as celebrating with family, and they know that. All they ask is that you appreciate what they do. Their service pays for your freedom. We should all feel grateful that American soldiers are willing to serve.

(Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and a long time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free lance columnist for over 18 years.)