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“I'll be home for Christmas,
You can plan on me,
Please have snow and mistletoe,
And presents on the tree …”
Please have snow and mistletoe,
And presents on the tree …”
– I’ll Be Home For Christmas - Ram, Gannon and Kent; recorded by Bing Crosby
in October 1943
I listen to those words every Christmas through the hiss and crack of the 78 rpm record on my Grandfather’s century-old Columbia record playing machine. It’s a copy that my Uncle, Tech. Cpl. Vitaut Voselius sent to my Grandfather in Detroit, through the kindness and, I’m convinced, magic of some USO Troop that helped GIs send Christmas gifts home to their families. Uncle Vittie and his buddies were half-a-world away from home, mistletoe and any presents. They had helped chase the German Army out of North Africa in May of that year, and then hopped to the Italian peninsula to press the pursuit. By the time they met that USO troop in early November; they had fought their way ashore at Salerno, and had survived the worst that the German 16th Panzer Division could dish out.
Uncle Vittie didn’t make it home for Christmas that year, nor did he in 1944; but, by 1945 – thank God – he did. That Christmas, he had dinner with Grandpa, my Mom (his sister) and my Dad; and – like most of the veterans of WWII – got about putting the war behind him and quietly getting back to work in the world that he had just fought to save. Not quite 10 years later, he used the VA mortgage program to buy a little house on Hinton in Riverview Village that my parents rented from him until they could later afford to buy it themselves.
Every Christmas in that little house, and for as long as we were all together, we played that record on Christmas Day, all of us smiling through teary eyes at each other and just loving being together. Today, I’m the last one left from that circle, but I play the record every year for my wife and children.
And you know what? Mom, Dad, Grandpa – and especially Uncle Vittie – all come home for Christmas every time I hear it … if only in my dreams.
in October 1943
I listen to those words every Christmas through the hiss and crack of the 78 rpm record on my Grandfather’s century-old Columbia record playing machine. It’s a copy that my Uncle, Tech. Cpl. Vitaut Voselius sent to my Grandfather in Detroit, through the kindness and, I’m convinced, magic of some USO Troop that helped GIs send Christmas gifts home to their families. Uncle Vittie and his buddies were half-a-world away from home, mistletoe and any presents. They had helped chase the German Army out of North Africa in May of that year, and then hopped to the Italian peninsula to press the pursuit. By the time they met that USO troop in early November; they had fought their way ashore at Salerno, and had survived the worst that the German 16th Panzer Division could dish out.
Uncle Vittie didn’t make it home for Christmas that year, nor did he in 1944; but, by 1945 – thank God – he did. That Christmas, he had dinner with Grandpa, my Mom (his sister) and my Dad; and – like most of the veterans of WWII – got about putting the war behind him and quietly getting back to work in the world that he had just fought to save. Not quite 10 years later, he used the VA mortgage program to buy a little house on Hinton in Riverview Village that my parents rented from him until they could later afford to buy it themselves.
Every Christmas in that little house, and for as long as we were all together, we played that record on Christmas Day, all of us smiling through teary eyes at each other and just loving being together. Today, I’m the last one left from that circle, but I play the record every year for my wife and children.
And you know what? Mom, Dad, Grandpa – and especially Uncle Vittie – all come home for Christmas every time I hear it … if only in my dreams.
Merry Christmas, and the Happiest New Year to all!
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