Deployed Christmas: Strange, silent night
Once, we could embrace the idea our efforts were for the greater good
I recently attended my stepson’s Nativity play. At the end of the play, his second-grade class sang "Silent Night." Of all the Christmas carols, this one is the most sentimental to me. It recalls the first Christmas I spent deployed overseas in uniform, in Iraq in 2004.
Our Marine platoon was five months into a seven-month deployment, and we had already lost many friends, killed and wounded. That Christmas Eve, I was walking post-to-post visiting the unlucky Marines who’d pulled sentry duty instead of participating in our modest platoon party. When I got about 20 feet from one post, I could hear someone inside whistling "Silent Night."
The low, mournful tune was quickly interrupted by another voice, telling whoever was whistling to shut up with that. When I entered the post — a sandbagged bunker hardly big enough for three people — the two lance corporals were still arguing.
The first, snugly positioned behind a machine gun, was the one whistling. The second wanted him to quit — not because the whistling would disclose their position, and not because the whistler couldn’t hold a tune; he wanted him to quit because the song made him homesick.
It’s bad enough being gone for Christmas, he complained, without having to listen to what he called a depressing carol, while the whistler explained there was nothing depressing about "Silent Night" or about being deployed for Christmas; in fact, it was an honor to sit this post on this day. We were in Iraq holding the line so Americans at home could enjoy the holidays in peace. Unlike future Christmases in our lives, which would surely blur, this one held special meaning; it was one we’d never forget.
After finishing his little speech he resumed whistling "Silent Night."
Enduring for the greater good
For the months that remained on our deployment, whistling a few bars of "Silent Night" evolved into a sort of meme. A report of a bad IED strike: we whistle some "Silent Night." A squad gets ambushed on patrol: again, the hollow tune of "Silent Night." It was the idea that whatever we were enduring here, we were enduring for the greater good, so that violence wouldn’t visit America’s shores.
But this was all a long time ago. Enough time for our platoon and others like ours to return home, have families, and raise children who are not that many more Christmases away from being old enough to step into the ranks where we once served.
This Christmas, as members of our military spend the holidays far from home, I wonder about the meaning they will derive from the experience. When they think about America, how many of them see a country divided, at odds with itself politically, socially and even economically?
How many of them see a country increasingly indifferent to its wars? Those deployed to Afghanistan this Christmas are standing posts in an 18year long conflict, 2019 having marked a grim milestone in our nation’s history: the first time a young person can enlist to fight in a war that’s older than they are. Will they consider this fact as they ring in the New Year?
A different sound now
Sitting in the Nativity play, listening to the second graders, I asked myself these questions. I couldn’t help but imagine that Christmas in Iraq from 15 years ago as though it were happening in the context of today. I could see the two lance corporals, one behind the machine gun whistling, the other telling him to be quiet. They’re having the same argument, but it sounds different now.
The lance corporal who’s whistling is having a hard time convincing us his whistling isn’t simply a hollow tune. He’s having a hard time convincing us that in 2019 we’re standing this post to prevent another Sept. 11. The other Marine, the cynical one, says that we’re standing this post because American taxpayers, voters — citizens — have abandoned these wars.
I’m not quite ready to believe that. But the lance corporal whistling "Silent Night" is no longer convincing me either.
As the choir sang the final refrain — "Sleep in heavenly peace / Sleep in heavenly peace" — I decided that, for now, those lance corporals will have to leave their argument unresolved.
Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of “Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning.” His next novel, “Red Dress in Black and White,” will be published next year.
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