By Robert "Bob" Kickenweitz
When I was a youth growing up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, Christmas was pretty much the same year to year other than the presents we would receive.
Each year my family would watch a variety of Christmas Shows, Ozzie & Harriet Nelson with David and Ricky, Andy Williams, Perry Como, I Remember
Mamma, and of course The Story of the Nativity. On Christmas morning after church, my Aunt and Uncle would drive out from New York City to spend the day and have dinner with us, sometimes my Grandmother and Grandfather would be with us also. My younger brother Edd and I knew that whatever we received as gifts from my Aunt and Uncle there would always be a new pair of slipper socks for each of us, we hated slipper socks but we knew we couldn't say anything other than, "Thank you."
The year I have the most vivid memory of is 1966. This would be my first Christmas away from home, I would not have my family and friends around me, and we would not be having dinner together and for once I wished I could be home to receive those slipper socks. December 25, 1966 found me in Xuan Loc, South Vietnam as part of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Our base camp was located about 65 miles northeast of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, between the jungle and a rubber tree plantation, I really was not looking forward to Christmas that year. I can remember that after dinner on Christmas Eve I went and took a shower, put on a clean uniform and sat down to listen to Armed Forces Radio and to write some letters for my family back home. We also listened to Hanoi Hannah the only other station on the radio. She was the Tokyo Rose of the Vietnam War. She played the best music and in between songs would send out her propaganda message. On this night, she was saying that the Vietcong, (you remember the guys in the black pajamas) would be having Christmas Dinner on the base camp of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment the following day. Now that’s a message that really got our attention.
At about ten in the evening I got up to go over to the service for Christmas Mass. Our Chaplain, Father Egan, his assistant Tony Graziano and whoever else helped, did a superb job in preparing an open field into a beautiful place to serve midnight Mass. They started by taking some beer and soda pallets to construct a floor for our altar, then nailed some plywood on top of the pallets to finish the floor. For the rear walls of the altar, they nailed four by eight sheets of plywood to the floor, then lifting the plywood seven to eight feet high into the air to create the rear walls of the altar. Blue spotlights were used to wash light across the back walls of the altar. A podium with a white cross on the front of it was in the center of the altar.
