… then Mother read from the Bible and declared that there would be at least one night of peace in this war -- Christmas night in the Ardennes Forest.
— Fritz Vincken
Every family has their Christmas rituals. One ritual of ours is to watch three great war films. If you do not know about them, or have not seen them in a while, I encourage you to do so this Christmas. Watching them any other time of year is just not the same. I have no favorite; I love them equally, but in order of their release: Battleground (1949), Stalag 17 (1953) and Silent Night (2002) which is the most family friendly. All three stories take place during the winter of 1944 and each deals with different themes. However, they share an important one. Man is prideful and cruel, but not a beast.
I will do my best not to spoil anything for you.
Battleground is a heart breaking film written by the incomparable Robert Pirosh, and a Battle of the Bulge combat veteran (Pirosh later wrote and directed the excellent, Go For Broke, about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team). Pirosh’s screenplay won the Academy Award in 1949. It is the story of a single squad of 101st Airborne soldiers in the surrounded town of Bastogne.
These soldiers are pulled in all directions by conflicting orders, rumors of SS executions, infiltrators impersonating Americans and their own fear. Their misery is compounded by the cold, hunger and their longing for home and a woman’s kindness. Each soldier has a reckoning with one or more of these demons; not all survive and all want to run away.
A reverent moment in the film is the Chaplain’s Christmas service, which I encourage you to watch below. What is your answer to the $64 question?
Stalag 17 leans into the comedic wind that sometimes blows after a war. Written by Donald Beven and Edmund Trzcinski, two American airmen who spent Christmas 1944 in an actual Stalag, the film remains iconic. Themes of betrayal, avarice, grace and compassion run through it from beginning to end. So does comeuppance.
The men imprisoned in Stalag 17 (Stalag is a contraction of Stammlager- enlisted camp) are plagued by a traitor in their midst. Duty bound to try to escape, all their attempts are foiled. How did the Germans find out?
Suspicion falls on the friendless barracks marketeer, J.J. Sefton (William Holden), who buys and sells from and to the German guards and seems to have a collection of everything: booze, cigarettes, food and even time alone with the ladies. It is all too much for the bitter men of the barracks and Sefton gets his. But all are deceived.
Over Christmas, each man has a bitter or sweet moment: Joey, his mind destroyed by war, cannot enjoy his piccolo, Animal’s longing for Betty Grable is doomed, Triz’s self-delusion that the child his wife found was really due to her unfaithfulness. Sefton loses most of his treasure during the celebrations such as they are. On Christmas Eve, the men sing, “O’come All Ye Faithful,” while Sefton starts to work out the mystery of the traitorous happenings.
The 2002 Halmark film, Silent Night, is based on a real Christmas eve in 1944 when a strong German woman hosted three American and four German soldiers, all lost, in a small cabin during the Battle of the Bulge. In October 1944, bombed out German baker Hubert Vincken sent his wife, Elisabeth, and his 12-year-old son, Fritz to an isolated Ardennes cabin. He could not have known they would be in the path of Hitler’s last great offensive. The Americans arrived first that Christmas Eve, carrying a comrade with a wounded leg. The Germans arrived later, freezing and asking for shelter. Frau Vincken made the men store their weapons in the woodshed as a condition of their stay.
The great story was rewritten and produced for the screen by brothers Roger and Rory Aylward and stars Linda Hamilton as Elisabeth Vincken (Rory Aylward was one of my instructors at Officer Candidate School, Armor officer he was). The Aylwards modified the details for dramatic effect and tension, but remained true to the event and Linda Hamilton’s performance is commendable.
The actual event was much more amiable than shown in the movie. Fritz later said all seven soldiers wept after his mother prayed before their meal:
Let’s all be thankful to the Lord for being together tonight, being peaceful in this terrible war. Let’s enjoy dinner, the little things that we have. And let’s promise to be friendly to each other forever, if possible. Let’s also pray for an end to this terrible war, so that we all can go home very soon.
One can understand their tears. After all, death was only a few yards away in that woodshed. They were relieved of that terrible burden by Frau Vincken’s grace. Elisabeth Vincken certainly saved the wounded American and likely saved the lives of all seven soldiers who were without shelter that brutally cold Christmas Eve. The next morning, Christmas day, the soldiers went their separate ways.
However, Fritz Vincken never forgot that Christmas and later immigrated to the United States to become a successful baker in Hawaii. He later found two of the Americans who shared that night with him, but never found the German soldiers. The Americans were found after his story was broadcast on the television show, Unsolved Mysteries in 1995.
I pray your Christmas is merry and bright and filled with love. Please build dendritic power and avoid the anastomosing currents into the shallow mud.
In the mean time, I will be watching a few other “classics”…
And that’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year ‘round.
Thanks for the recommendations!