Veteran remembers Christmas overseas

    The Christmas season is a time for family members to come together and enjoy each other?s company. That is, unless you?re stuck in the Black Forest of Germany trying to dodge bullets and survive the frigid cold. That was what Christmas time was in 1944 for World War II veteran George Grove, now a resident of the United Presbyterian Home in Washington.

    Christmas did not have the same celebratory feel on the battleground of Europe as it did back home in the United States. For Grove and his compatriots, Christmas was just another day of the year.

    ?We couldn?t do anything. We couldn?t celebrate,? remembers Grove. ?We were in battle. We couldn?t just say, ?It?s the 25th tomorrow. I?ll be darned!? It was a normal, combative day.?

    Grove said that it?s often hard for him to remember what he was doing on a particular day because they all run together.

    ?So much of it was the same thing over and over,? said Grove. ?I know it?s hard to understand how you can forget Christmas. Over there, Christmases were all pretty much alike. We spent them just staying alive.?

    Grove entered the service in 1941, the year the United States entered the war. Grove remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing on Dec. 7 of that year, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was training in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. 

    ?The day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I was on guard duty,? said Grove. ?My superior officer brought an old World War I Enfield rifle out, took my wooden rifle away, and gave me three rounds of ammunition. He said, ?Look for Jap planes.? We laugh about it now, but I walked around the rest of my guard duty with an old Enfield rifle looking for Jap planes. We were afraid of more attacks.?

For the full article, see the Dec. 8 edition of the Washington Evening Journal.