A Christmas message from WWII soldier’s letter

At the end of his Christmas letter to grandmother during World War II my dad wrote, “We just finished a rough deal and been relieved.“

A mimeographed drawing at the bottom of my dad's letter shows Hitler as a snowman, a snow ball headed at him. The words “Christmas from the continent of Europe — 1944” are affixed to the bottom of the page.

He tells Gramma not to worry about him. The battle he calls a rough deal will be remembered by Rangers as their toughest, recalling D-Day at Normandy, saying that when they battled for Hill 400, this was their longest day. Records note that the hill shook with a barrage from 18 battalions of German artillery readying for the Battle of the Bulge. It was called a suicide mission. It’s recorded that the capture of the hill could have unraveled Hitler’s last counteroffensive. The Rangers had 90 percent casualties. They were outnumbered 10 to one.

Eight decades ago, during the holiday season, soldiers with a will toward stopping the relentless onslaught of Hitler's Third Reich overcame the obstacles of nature and the firestorm of the German armies to give us peace.

Sacrifice allows us to be at home, to be safe, to recall the story of that first Christmas with the babe in the manger, and about how soldiers from Iowa and Illinois families, sons of the sod, have volunteered to fight in wars so that the generations that followed would have peace on Earth.

My father writes of weather, of mud, about how a friend stands by you one moment and is gone the next. At the Hurtgen Forest, the site of Hill 400, 33,000 men from the U.S. 1st Army were killed or incapacitated. Hurtgen Forest is the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought, Sept. 19 to Dec. 16, 1944

A booklet of my dad's was saved and left for family, printed in Czechoslovakia. The first page is a dedication, in memory, of those men of E Company, “Who have so valiantly gave their lives so that we, who have survived the struggle, may enjoy the pursuit of happiness in the new world of peace.”

The booklet my father left and my father’s forty five pages of letters from 1944 and 1945 are stuffed into a folder now. The history is my family’s, the lessons personal, but in a larger sense, the meanings are greater, concerning life and death and whole nations. In this age, as in every previous time, obstacle surrounds each of us. At Christmas, we remember to raise our heads to heaven, to bow them in humility and to hold in our hearts the meanings that matter.

Every Christmas while he was alive, my dad said our prayer for a blessing upon the gifts, treasures that include health and freedom.

“War is a terrible thing,” Dad writes Dec. 11, 1944. Four days earlier he had been to Hill 400, a battle in which only a few Rangers were still standing at the top, holding their position. Hill 400 is remembered as bloodier than D-Day.

‘You reach a point where rifles and machine guns don’t faze you in the least.’

The Allies were deeper into the Third Reich than they had ever been. Afterward, my father will cross the Ruhr and Rhine Rivers. After Hurtgen Forest, dad writes for candy, chocolates, fruitcake, “anything.”

At the bottom of his last page he writes in bold letters:

Hill 400

Bergstein, Germany

Dec. 7 — 9, 1944.

2nd Ranger BTN.

The message is clear. The Christmas we enjoy has been given to us all, through immeasurable cost and sacrifice. Each year, gifts of God and man are remembered at Christmas, that peace on earth will be with us, in the years to come.

Tim Trenkle is a community college professor from Dubuque.