Memorable Christmas Stories in U.S. Military History

On this episode of Our American Stories, The History Guy remembers forgotten military history that took place around the Christmas holiday from different time periods and conflicts. This episode is dedicated to those whose service keeps them far from home over the holiday.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star, or the American
people or the star, and where your stories are welcome.
Send them to our American Stories dot com. There's some
of our favorites. Our next story comes to us from
a man who's simply known as the History Guy. His
videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of

(00:33):
all ages on YouTube. The History Guy has also heard
right here at our American Stories. Here's the History Guy
remembering the forgotten stories from US military history. Christmas is
traditionally a family holiday in the United States, but he
wasn't always the case. In fact, in early US history,
Christmas was often rejected as being too British, or, if

(00:54):
it was celebrated, was more of a rowdy celebration than
a family celebration. Many historians credit the change in American
Christmas traditions to five installments of The Sketch Book of
Jeffrey Cran by author Washington Irving that were published in
January of eighteen twenty. The sketchbook followed the fictional Jeffrey
Cran as he celebrated Christmas traditions in an English manor House,

(01:17):
and those traditions who are actually not based on any
real celebration. They were largely fabricated by Washington Irving, but
they conjured up that idea of a holiday sped with family,
with goodwill towards all that became the American Christmas tradition.
And as we celebrate those traditions, we should be mindful
of those who, for whatever reason, are unable to be
near their family during the holiday season, especially those whose

(01:40):
service keeps him far from hearth and home. Christmas seventeen
seventy five was busy for George Washington and the Continental Army.
At four p among Christmas Day, the Army turned out
for their evening parade. They were issued ammunition and told
that they were departing on a secret mission. At six pm,
they started crossing the Delaware River, a feat that the

(02:03):
man in charge of the crossing, Chief of Artillery, Henry Knocks,
described as having occurred with almost infinite difficulty, due largely
to the presence of large chunks of ice floating in
the water. Nonetheless owing largely to the expertise of the
men of the fourteenth Continental Regiment known as the Marblehead Regiment,
since it was composed of mostly seafaring men of the
area around Marblehead, Massachusetts. The army managed to cross without

(02:24):
the loss of a single man. The following day, in
a short, sharp action, Washington and some twenty four hundred
troops managed to largely surprise and entrapt fifteen hundred Hessian
troops under the command of Colonel Johann Raul in the
town of Trenton, New Jersey. Twenty two Hessians were killed,
including Colonel Rawl, and nearly a thousand captured, along with
significant amount of food and ammunition. The victory, although small

(02:48):
in the scope of the war, came at a critical
moment for Washington in the army, perhaps literally rescuing the
American Revolution from collapse. While it has been commonly said
that the German troops were drunk from a Christmas celebration,
contemporary reports deny that legend. You can't help but feel
for these Heshian trips, captured and nearly freezing to death
on the trip back across the river so far from
their homes. The day after Christmas. The Continental Army faced

(03:11):
the same challenges as any army away from home, far
from family, and one illustration of that was a little
remembered event that occurred at Fort Ticonderoga in New York
on Christmas Day seventeen seventy six. Fort Taikonderoga, at the
south end of New York's Late Champlain, had originally been
built by the Fringe in seventeen fifty seven and fifty eight.

(03:32):
During the Seven Years War, it was captured by the
British in the seventeen fifty nine Battle of Taikondaroga, in
which the fortifications were largely destroyed, and then occupied by
the British with a small force which used the fort
as a supply and communication point between Canada and New York.
By seventeen seventy five, the fort had fallen into disrepair
and was defended by a token force of just fifty men.

(03:53):
Just a month after the first shots of the American
Revolution at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, colonial militia
under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold surprised the tiny garrison
of the fort, capturing it. Although it was only a
small action, it was significant in that it disrupted communication
between British in the colonies in British Canada and resulted
in the capture of a significant amount of artillery, which

(04:13):
the American rebels had great need. Using Fort Ticonderoga as
the jumping off point. The Americans had attempted to invade
Quebec in seventeen seventy six, an invasion that ended in failure,
but the fighting season had ended before the British could
attempt an assault on the fort. Christmas seventeen seventy six
had American troops stationed at the fort and around Lake Champlain,

(04:33):
preparing for the anticipated invasion of the area by the
British in seventeen seventy seven. Regiments from around the colonies
were stationed in the area. The colonies were a diverse
last and there were quite a lot of cultural differences
and animosities in this case between New Englanders and troops
from the South. Discipline can be a challenge for any army,
especially in remote outpost, and perhaps more so in the

(04:53):
Continental Army would suffered from divided commands. Late on Christmas
Day seventeen seventy six, in a fight with the British
but between Americans, a regiment from Pennsylvania attacked a regiment
from Massachusetts, dragging their officers from their tents, assaulting them
and robbing them. Details are sketchy, as the events of
the disturbance were, if not covered up, at least kept quiet.

(05:15):
The fight may have been the result of secular tensions,
class tensions, and the enemies of troop morale everywhere, boredom
and too much drink. While no one appears to have
been killed in the fracas, there were injuries and at
least a few musket shots fired. A court martial failed
to find convictions, and the event was swept under the rug,
with the official log at Ticonderoga that day left completely blank.

(05:36):
Historians have only recently been able to piece together the
event from period letters and records from the court martial.
It is easy to see why the army was not
keen to publicize the event, as such interesting fighting could
have ended the revolution before it started. And you've been
listening to the history guy telling the stories of American
soldiers at war or overseas at the time that many

(05:59):
of us our home around a Christmas tree, around a fireplace,
celebrating the holiday season, celebrating sacred time like Christmas time,
And my goodness, what Americans were doing, at least American
soldiers were doing in seventeen seventy five, around Christmas time
is as far from hearth and home as you can get.

(06:21):
Washington had retreated and escaped from New York, and he
needed a victory. And he and his men, well, they
found themselves in Trenton, having crossed the Delaware. And folks
crossing the Delaware in winter going into New Jersey try
it some time. The river was filled with ice. This
was not a good time. What a big victory for America.

(06:43):
It changed the tide to the war, changed morale, changed recruiting,
changed everything. More. Stories about US military history, particularly around
the holiday season around Christmas time, continue here with the
History Guy on our American Stories. Here are our American Stories.

(07:32):
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(07:53):
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our American Stories and with a History Guy remembering forgotten

(08:14):
stories from US military history as they were late to
the holidays. If the Christmas of seventeen seventy five had
brought Washington victory at Trenton, Christmas seventeen seventy seven was
perhaps the low point for Washington and his army in
their winter quarters at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. Well, the
Americans had won a great victory over General John Burgoyne
in the Saratauga Campaign. To the north, the British had

(08:36):
captured the then American capital of Philadelphia, and Washington had
been unable to recapture it. When his army went into
winter camp, they were facing a critical shortage of supplies.
The legend is that the winner of seventeen seventy seven
was exceptionally harsh, but that was not actually the case.
The deprivations faced by the twelve thousand men of the
Continental Army in seventeen seventy seven were caused by neglect,

(08:57):
as local counties failed to provide for their own militias,
and the Continental Congress seemed unwilling or unable to provide
for adequate supply. Many soldiers were without shoes. The Marquis
de Lafayette described them The unfortunate soldiers were in want
of everything. They had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes.
Their feet and legs froze till they had become almost black,
and it was often necessary to amputate them. Washington had

(09:21):
hoped for a brilliant winter action to rescue morale and support,
as he had done at Trenton in seventeen seventy five,
but was told by his officers that his army was
frankly unfit for attack. He considered threatening resignation and ordered
force Congress to act, even as other officers conspired against
his leadership. Within the Continental Congress. A blizzard hit on
December twenty third and continued through Christmas. Was a dismal holiday.

(09:44):
Trips were fed a spartan meal of burnt mutton and
watered grog. That night, a soldier from Connecticut's seventh Regiment,
a freed black men whose name was only recorded as Jathrow,
was found frozen to death in his tent. It was
the first recorded death on the rolls at Valley Forge.
Some saw the time as an existential crisis for the
army and the revolution, which seemed to be on the

(10:05):
Virgin collapse. Washington reportedly asked a young lieutenant that Christmas day,
have you not suffered enough? The officer responded, having come
this far, we can but go the rest of the
distance with you to lead us. We can't lose. Outside
his command tent, that night, Washington made a bleak holiday speech,

(10:26):
May God relieve your sufferings if the Congress will not,
and a good Christmas to you. But it was that
winter and the coming spring when the Continental Army was
reorganized and seemed to coalesce in the face of adversity.
From the bleak Christmas came what many see as the
turning point in the conflict. By the time that America

(10:47):
was again fighting the British in the War of eighteen twelve,
Christmas had largely fallen out of vogue in America, but
the practice was viewed with this day as being both
too British and too Catholic. On Christmas Day eighteen oh six,
a riot had occurred in New York City between Nativists
and Irish immigrants over the celebration of Christmas, one of
many such disturbances in New York City of the era.
British troops in North America noted with surprised the indifference

(11:09):
to the holiday among Americans and French Canadians, but there
was a great Christmas celebration that occurred as part of
that war. It was on Christmas Eve eighteen fourteen that
negotiators and the neutral city of Ghent in the United
Netherlands concluded their negotiations and signed and affixed their seals
to the treaty ending the war. The treaty essentially returned
to the status quo before the war, demonstrating perhaps the

(11:31):
futility of the entire conflict. But the defeat of Napoleon
in eighteen fourteen had ended the issues of restricting trade
with France and the need for the British Navy to
press sailors, which had been the sticking points of the war.
Both sides simply wanted peace. That agreement came too late
to inform either army before the January eighth Battle of
New Orleans and was not official until ratified by Congress

(11:53):
the following February. But when the British and American representatives
sat down to a Christmas dinner of beef and plum
pudding and drank hosts to the health of King George
and President Madison. They had a legitimate cause for celebration,
as the treaty initiated what has become more than two
centuries of peaceful relations between the United States and Britain.

(12:14):
But American Christmas traditions were still developing, and that was
well illustrated, and they nearly forgotten eighteen twenty six eggnog riot.
In eighteen twenty six, in order to help quell would
have become an unruly reputation, US Military Academy Superintendent Colonel
Sylvania's there had prohibitedly purchase, storage, or consumption of alcohol

(12:36):
on campus, meaning that cadets could not enjoy what had
previously been the academy's holiday tradition drinking highly spiked eggnog
at Christmas. In violation of this rule, that snuck in
two gallons of whiskey and a gallon of rom for
a clandestine party to be held in the North Barracks.
Drunken cadets then got out of control, doing property damage
and harassing and assaulting Captain Ethan Allen Hancock, a faculty

(12:58):
member who tried to restore order. In the end, nearly
a third of the cadets that the academy were involved.
Twenty cadets were court martialed and eleven were expelled. Among
those implicated but not charged was Cadet Jefferson Davis, who
had later become President of the Confederacy during the US
Civil War. Reportedly, he was saved because, being among the
first to get drunk, he had passed out before most

(13:20):
of the rioting began. Had he been expelled, preventing his
military career upon which his future was derived, history may
have been different. Christmas was a dismal affair for American
troops in the art In Forest in nineteen forty four.
Germany had mounted a significant counterattack on an area that
Allied planters had thought too inhospitable to vehicles to be

(13:42):
a point of attack. The area was lightly defended by
mostly either inexperienced troops or those that were being given arrest.
The front was thrown into chaos when some two hundred
thousand Germans with a thousand tanks started one of the
last major German offensives of the Second World War, launching
on December sixteenth. The apex of the battle was the
siege of the important town of Bastone, Belgium, which held

(14:04):
crossroads critical to the German line of attack. A mixed
four centered around the US hundred first Airborne Division was
encircled and spent Christmas in the midst of one of
the fiercest battles of the Western Front. While church services
were held in the town, Christmas was a makeshift affair.
One soldier, so disabled by bronchitis, pleursy and pneumonia, had
to literally crawl into town as his unit could not

(14:25):
spare men to carry him. He said that the closest
he came to Christmas dinner was seeing the turkey leg
the doctor was eating as he examined him. Other troops
are called being offered hospitality by Belgian civilians, but one
story of that Christmas sticks out, as related by Fritz Vinkan,
who was twelve years old the Christmas of Hunteen forty four.
He and his family lived on the German Belgian border,

(14:47):
and his father had sent he and his mother to
a small hunting cabin in the Arden forest, thinking he
would keep them safe. His father had been called into
the Civil Defense Corps, but he had hoped to come
to the cabin to celebrate Christmas. When heard an at
the door on Christmas Eve, he hoped it was his father,
but instead it was three American soldiers, one of whom
was wounded. They did not speak German, but one of

(15:08):
them spoke some French, and they were able to communicate
enough with Fritz's mother, Elizabeth to say that they had
lost their unit, had been wandering the force for days,
and were out of food. Knowing that helping the enemy
could be punishable by death, she let them inside. She
had a chicken and some potatoes with which to make
Christmas dinner. Shortly thereafter, there was another knock on the door.

(15:29):
When Elizabeth answered, she found four German soldiers. Knowing the
volatility of the situation, she told them they could coom
in only if they accepted her other guests. They were
apprehensive when they saw the Americans, but she told them
this is a holy night and there will be no
shooting here. The soldiers all gave up their weapons, and
that Christmas, Fritz, Elizabeth and seven soldiers ate a meal

(15:52):
of chicken, soup and potatoes, and slept in the small cabin.
One of the Germans spoke English and had been a
medical student. He gave the wounded America first aid, and
in the morning gave the Americans directions back to their lines.
It was a brief moment of peace in the midst
of war. Fritz eventually immigrated to the United States, and
in nineteen ninety five his story was featured on the

(16:13):
television program Unsolved Mysteries, and astoundingly, that episode led him
to Ralph Blank, one of the soldiers who had spent
that Christmas with him. The two were reunited in nineteen
ninety six over a bowl of chicken soup where they
could reminisce about that extraordinary night. Ralph passed away in
nineteen ninety nine and Fritz died in two thousand and one.

(16:36):
From everyone here at the History Guy, we wish all
of our viewers and especially those whose service keeps them
away from home on this holiday, a very merry Christmas.
And his special thanks to Greg Hangler for his work
on the piece, and his special thanks also to the
History Guy for all he does with us. And if
your interested in seeing what he does viewing it, my goodness,
go to the YouTube channel the History Guy. History deserves

(16:59):
to be remembered an excellent place to spend time with
you and your family. And by the way, some of
these stories, they're just hard to listen to that Valley
Forge story, everybody thinking it was such a terrific winter,
and of course it's no duck walk winter at Valley Forge.
But it was total negligence. The Congress just wasn't appropriating
funds for our soldiers. And yet our soldiers while they

(17:23):
marched on and lived through it and won epic victories after.
And my goodness, the story of Art the Arden Forest
and what happened in bus Stone and watch Band of Brothers,
and well you can relive it for yourself. What a
Christmas it was for the one hundred and first the
story of our soldiers abroad and at war, and some

(17:44):
fairly amusing ones about our soldiers here, and of course
that's the Eggnog Riot of eighteen twenty six. Here on
our American story