Herb's Christmas Eve

Poor Herb - no Christmas package and feeling really low.

I have decided Marnie is Margaret, Herb's youngest sister.

This would be 'Marnie' and Herb in 1953 at Christmas

And this is Christmas 1959 - Harry with his back to us, Dorothy - Herb's second wife on the left - Ruth - Harry's wife - and Nellie Jane and Olive at the head of the holiday table.

On Christmas Eve, what Nellie Jane and Oliver are reading at home and Herb is writing in Luxembourg. Taken from Newspapers.com

Christmas Eve

Dearest Mother + Dad,
How I wish I might have been with you to-night, even for a few hours. But one can’t bridge thirty-five hundred miles except in imagination so I must be content with that.

Who is trimming Marnie’s Christmas tree, thereby taking my job away from me? And where are you putting it? In the same place? This afternoon while I was out for a walk I met a man bringing home whole load of small Christmas trees in a cart drawn by one ox and two milch cows. The poor cows don’t get much rest around here. Many of the peasants have to use them to do their plowing and carting nowadays.

Dec. 26th

My intentions were good night before last but after I started I got to feeling so low in spirits that I couldn’t go on. Lord I was homesick. I wasn’t the only one, either. So the evening ended by we non coms playing cards to keep our minds off our troubles.

Christmas wasn’t a howling success either. We had a good dinner but that doesn’t make a Christmas. At first we were to have turkey but the turkey didn’t arrive so we bought a pig from one of the peasants and half of it made a good dinner for the whole section. With it we had fried potatoes, canned peas, and apple sauce and for dessert apple pie, cheese, nuts + raisins.

The day before Christmas a box came for the Section from the Red Cross. In it was a phonograph with twenty records and a raft of cigarettes. In addition everyone had chocolate + tobacco from the Y.M.C.A. Some six or seven of the boys had received their Christmas packages. The rest are presumably hanging around in some base port. However it’s forbidden to criticize the government or it’s servants any way. They can’t prevent one from thinking, though.

Nothing new occurs. I expect that we’ll move to some other town in Luxembourg, further south, in a few days, but where we’ll go from there I have no slightest idea.

The papers have no news except long detailed descriptions of what the President + Mrs. Wilson wear, eat, visit and talk about day by day. That sort of thing may be interesting to both French and Americans at present in Paris but there’s only one interesting topic amongst Americans in the armies of occupation: That is “when do we get out of here?”

The weather has been colder lately and there was a fall of three or four inches of snow for Christmas.

The rest of the news is that I am well and as happy probably as could be reasonably expected.

And, oh yes, I got those socks you sent me. That’s a good scheme + might be pushed further.

With best love to all,
Your affectionate son,
Herb