Ridgway's Notebook Christmas Special

A Christmas in Company F

For many years I sharpened my history incisors on human matters. It was a journey to, to whatever extent possible, understand the parachute infantryman. It was long hours dissecting interviews, decoding diaries, and transcribing letters — and longer hours martialing my forensic ability to reconcile them with the bureaucratic remnants of army life: messages, action reports, and map pins. The mosaic came together to display a life cast of many terrors and tribulations, variable feelings the most acute of which alternated between pride and homesickness, and a steady square-jawed tenacity to never lose.

He was the humanity behind the mechanics of the airborne division. He was the executioner, the man in the mud with the bayonet digging out the German hole-for-hole. I hope that you, my distinguished audience, will appreciate a brief break from microscoping the mechanics of the airborne division, which is the hallmark of Ridgway’s Notebook, and join me in a Christmas tradition of more human proportion.

In the 504th Parachute Infantry, Company F housed some of the most baleful fighters in the regiment. Yet a Christmas of peace emerged. It has been a tradition of mine for some years to read and reflect on “A Christmas in Company F,” and its reminder of war’s human dimension.

On Christmas morning, gradually, rivulets of sun washed the emerald countryside. Out on the new frontline, just outside of Bra, James Churchill and Werner Speer were sitting in their machine gun pit. It had been constructed overnight, closing a time where they had marched much and slept little.

That morning, it was Christmas Day, I don’t know how long or what time it was, but we got to where we were going, dug our positions and we were taking turns – Churchill would take a nap and I wasn’t so happy that he was taking a nap and I was on guard with the machine gun. It started to get light. Very, very indistinct and there were trees and I guess it was about 75 yards to our front and there were small trees. It could cloud a division but I could see movement and I thought, Oh, here we go. There were, it looked like large enemy group coming through those woods and I woke Churchill up and he cocked the machine gun and wanted to fire. I mentioned, “Hold on. Hold on. Please don’t fire. Let them get closer.” They were crossing in front of us, not towards us and they came out on the trees and brush and they weren’t Germans — they weren’t military at all. They were Belgian civilians and they were carrying bags of stuff, I guess whatever they could carry to get away from the enemy, the Germans, and I’ll never forget it: Churchill and I looked at one another and thought, boy, oh boy, I’m glad we didn’t fire on them.¹

Just a short distance away, James Sapp awoke to find the sun was finally breaking through the gray, dismal fog which had depressingly tucked in the Belgian countryside. The sun had been a fugitive since they left France, and it was a welcome change from the deep frost which had set in the night before. As the blue skies opened up, they unmasked another battlefield high above them. Sapp looked up and could see so many bombers flying towards Germany that their vapor contrails almost occluded the sun; they laced through the sky like ribbons.²

Lieutenant Robert Bramson was preparing Christmas dinner for his platoon. He was far away from the halls of law school which he had previously known. “I do remember the rear area sending up food containers I think for the holiday – the meat, whatever it was, was too cold to eat,” recalled Bramson. “We didn’t have any stoves and the food was brought up in I think marmite barrels or containers and we had to use some kind of explosive material we had to make a fire and heat up a mess kit cup of snow to warm up the meat. It was probably too dangerous where we were for the mess crews to do more.”³

Mounted to the front of a gentle hill, W. George Benivitz presided over the shallow valley separating friend from foe. On Christmas Day his most pernicious weapon was his field telephone which was in network with the reverse of the hill, where the company’s three mortars lay in battery. Through his eyes and phone, Benivitz held their deadly potential at his command. In this way, he vigilantly passed the day as it meld into that hallowed Christmas night.

My position was on the forward slope where I had an excellent view; however, the position was exposed and I dared not leave my foxhole during the daylight as it would be hazardous to my health. I had a small radio and a sound-powered telephone. Any movement and we would drop a few shells on them which was devastating because of the tree burst.

I had lost track of time and date. During the night I received a call that I would have a visitor. The only way he could find my position was to follow the telephone line by grasping it. The country-side was covered with ice and snow. I felt tugs on the line and got prepared to meet friend or foe. It was our supply sergeant. He said, “Merry Christmas” and handed me a canteen. It was filled with cognac. I took two swallows and my body temperature elevated many degrees. He also handed me a semi-frozen fist-sized piece of turkey and departed. I gnawed on that turkey for some time.⁴

At dawn, the war resumed.

W. George Benivitz, Werner Speer, and James Churchill in 1945

Some Housekeeping

There will be no Ridgway’s Notebook next Saturday in observance of Christmas. However, let simmer in your mind the things to come: a two-part series on how Gavin viewed the division — and what he learned from it — set within the Battle of the Bulge.

There is a failure on our part to train officers to command divisions. No one told me how to command a division. Manual told how to command a regiment or battalion or how to be a staff officer…. If I didn’t do a great deal of reading on the outside, I would have had a difficult time.

— Major General James Gavin

1. Speer, Werner. Interview with author, 2016.

2. Sapp, James T. Interview with author.

3. Bramson, Robert E. E-mail to author, March 24, 2014.

4. Benavitz, George. “Christmas Dinner 1944.” Written account. Courtesy Benavitz family.