My most memorable Christmas Eve was in 1868 while I was stationed at Bitburg air Base, at Bitburg, Germany.

I was working with a load crew loading ordinance on an F4 and it was an exceptionally cold wintery night, with blowing snow and a raw wind that seemed to cut through our winter parkas like a knife. We had been working about 2 hours when the sargeant told us to clear and ground and we would take a short smoke break, so we all came out from under the aircraft and walked a short distance over to our line truck, A metro van (about the same as a UPS truck) where we could get inside out of the wind and have a quick cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette while we warmed up a bit. A few minutes later as we stepped out of the truck one of the guys says "Merry Christmas" and another guy started singing Silent Night. Without a word amongst us, we all started singing along, and when that song finished he started another. Some guys from another crew came over and they started singing with us, and before we knew it we were attracting a crowd from all up and down the flight line, as well as from the hangars and maintenance shops. We must have been singing for nearly an hour when a pickup pulled up and a Chief Master Sargeant stepped out, Our line chief, suddenly we realized we had been goofing off for an hour and we all silently stood there expecting to get chewed out, but the line chief says, "Sounds pretty good guys, but I don't think they can hear you out in the housing area, Lets try it again, only this time sing out like you mean it!.

Before we finally broke up and went back to work there must have been 300 or 400 guys in that group.