TruthNews Commentary, December 25, 2005

I received several "Holiday" cards this year inscribed with the words "Peace on Earth." Unfortunately, most of our past Christmases have not seen peace on earth. Indeed, on many Christmases, American military men have been engaged in desperate fighting around the world. The very first Christmas day after the declaration of American independence saw significant military action.

On Christmas day of 1776, General George Washington led an army of 2,400 men in a crossing of the Delaware River in order to attack the British garrison at Trenton, New Jersey. Earlier that year, the British had captured New York, and Washington pulled his army back into Pennsylvania. The British then garrisoned various cities in New Jersey. On Christmas day of 1776, Washington assembled his troops at McKonkey's Ferry, Pennsylvania. The password for the day was "Victory or Death."

Washington and an advanced party crossed over first to secure a landing site. The troops broke camp at 2 p.m., and began crossing the river in 30 Durham boats. The Durham boat was a 60-foot flat bottomed boat used to carry freight on the Delaware. Washington's original plan called for the entire army to be disembarked on the New Jersey side of the Delaware by midnight, but a storm of hail and sleet broke out early in the crossing. In addition, the winds were strong, and the river was full of ice floes that had been drifting downstream for several days, so it was not until 3:00 a.m. on the morning of December 26 that Washington's army completed the crossing.

The British had garrisoned Trenton with 1,500 Hessian troops, German soldiers from the state of Hesse who had been rented by King George to help suppress the American Revolution. Washington began his attack around 8:00 AM, and the battle lasted an hour and a half. The American attack took the Hessians by surprise, and Washington's army killed 106 Hessian soldiers and captured 896. No Americans were killed in the attack, and by noon, Washington's army had re-crossed the Delaware back into Pennsylvania, taking the prisoners and captured supplies with them. A week later, Washington crossed the Delaware again to attack the British garrison in Princeton, New Jersey. Again, the surprise attack led to American victory.

Following the defeats of the previous year, Washington's daring attacks in the heart of British-held territory renewed hope among the army, Congress, and the people. The war raged for another 6 years until Washington trapped British General Cornwallis and 7,000 British soldiers in Yorktown, Virginia, on September 28, 1882. After a 3-week siege, Cornwallis surrendered. Sporadic fighting continued for another year until the British signed the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.

Thirty years after the Battle of Yorktown, a new war broke out with Great Britain over the Royal Navy's practice of kidnapping American sailors to serve on British warships. The War of 1812 began during the height of the Napoleonic Wars and was at first only a sideshow to the British. However, in April of 1814, Napoleon was defeated and forced to abdicate. The British then began shifting large numbers of troops to North America in order to crush American independence once and for all. The British succeeded in sacking and burning Washington D.C. in August of 1814, but a subsequent attack on Baltimore and Fort McHenry failed, leading Francis Scott Key to pen "The Star Spangled Banner" with the immortal words, "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution."

The British came closest to success at New Orleans. American General Andrew Jackson had only 6,000 troops against 12,000 British troops who had been led by the Duke of Wellington in defeating Napoleon. In December of 1814, the British forces landed along the lower Mississippi River and began moving toward New Orleans. However, two days before Christmas, Jackson made a surprise attack on the British at the Villeré plantation. The British ended up with 277 casualties and decided to await reinforcements before making their attack on New Orleans. This gave Jackson time to build up his defensive positions on the south side of the city. When the British made their main attack on January 8, 1815, Jackson's forces, aided by Jean Lafitte an his band of pirates, killed 700 British soldiers, including the British commander, Sir Edward Pakenham. Only 13 Americans were killed. The British then turned tail and sailed for England. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war on February 17.

During World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, the last major offensive of the German army, began shortly before Christmas. On December 16, 1944, the German army threw a quarter of a million men at a weak point in the Allied lines in the Ardennes forest in Belgium. The Nazi attack made considerable headway towards the Meuse River during one of the worst winters in Europe. On December 19, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, called a meeting of the senior Allied commanders to discuss the situation. Eisenhower asked General George Patton how long it would take to turn his Third Army north to counter-attack. Patton replied that he could do it in 48 hours, to the disbelief of the other generals present, because the Third Army was then 50 miles south in France pressing eastward. But before he had gone to the meeting, Patton had ordered his staff to prepare to turn north, and the movement was already underway.

By December 21 the German forces had surrounded Bastogne, which was defended by the 101st Airborne Division. When the Nazis demanded the Americans to surrender, General Anthony McAuliffe replied with the one-word answer, "Nuts!" Bad weather had kept the Allied air forces grounded, but two days before Christmas, in response to Patton's prayer for good weather, the skies began clearing, allowing the air forces to attack. The U.S. Ninth Air Force launched devastating bombing attacks on the German supply points in the rear, and P-47s began destroying the German troops on the roads. Patton's Third Army fought on throughout Christmas day, and on December 26 the lead elements of the Third Army reached Bastogne, ending the Nazi siege. By February 1945, the Germans were once again in full retreat. Hitler blew his brains out on April 30, and Germany surrendered eight days later.

Twenty-eight years after the Battle of the Bulge, the U.S. armed forces were embroiled in a war against communists in Vietnam. Despite the destruction of the Viet Cong communist insurgency in South Vietnam, many in America were demanding an "exit strategy," and Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1968 on a pledge to end the war. In December 1972, in an attempt to force the communists back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered a massive bombing of Hanoi, the capitol of North Vietnam. The operation, called Linebacker II, was the heaviest bomber strike of the Vietnam War, and the only time that heavy bombers were sent to bomb Hanoi. The mews media dubbed these attacks the "Christmas Bombings," although today they would no doubt have been called the "Holiday Bombings." American prisoner of war Col. Ted Guy, who was held in a prison camp in Hanoi, said "The floor and the walls started to shake...We observed, through the tiny peep hole in the door, hundreds of SAMs [Surface-to-Air Missiles] streaking into the night sky followed by horrendous explosions. By this time, the whole camp was rocking and rolling and all my fellow jailbirds were screaming encouragement to the attacking bombers. The guards tried to contain us, but soon ran for cover and were not seen the rest of the night...I knew then that the war would soon be over."

The attack began a week before Christmas and continued for 12 days. American aircraft dropped over a hundred thousand bombs on Hanoi and Haiphong. At the time, Hanoi was second only to Moscow in the strength of its air defenses, and 15 of the 121 B-52s participating in the attacks were shot down. The communists fired 1200 missiles at the attacking aircraft, expending most, if not all, of their air defense arsenal. Following the attack, the communists immediately returned to negotiations, and the Paris Peace treat was signed on January 27, 1973, officially ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. As part of the peace treaty, the communists released 591 American POWs, mainly downed airmen. Colonel Guy later said, "The Christmas bombing was indeed 'The Greatest Show on Earth' and in my opinion the single most important factor that led to our release."

A tenuous peace was observed in Vietnam for the next two years. But in 1975, the communists broke the peace treaty. In early March, the North Vietnamese army, then the fifth largest in the world, began a large scale invasion of South Vietnam. The U.S. Congress refused to allow President Ford to aid the beleaguered South Vietnamese, and South Vietnam surrendered on April 30, 1975, thirty years to the day after Hitler's suicide.

Today, as on many past Christmases, U.S. forces are engaged in battle. As in Vietnam, many in Congress are calling for an exit strategy, even when U.S. troops are enjoying considerable success. So, as those of us at home feast on turkey and goose, let's keep the American troops and their families in our thoughts and prayers. If you don't know what to pray, Patton's prayer would be a good start:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.