Christmas 1945

Immediately following World War II, I was stationed in Chatou, a suburb of Paris. The unit was responsible for all the USO people coming across the Atlantic Ocean, to entertain troops stationed in Africa and Europe. My crew and I were housed in a Catholic orphanage, the officers, some of the enlisted men and the USO personnel were housed in mansions used by the Germans during the occupation. I was the mess sergeant responsible for feeding up to 1500 people a day. We had two dining rooms, one for the officers and the USO people and a large hall for the enlisted men. The enlisted dining room was much the nicer, a very large elegant room with crystal chandeliers and two large wall mirrors on each side. Being stationed in an orphanage had its responsibilities as well as nice accommodations. Each evening after dinner we met two of the nuns at the back door of the kitchen. They waited with a child’s wagon which we would load with all the left over food and extra items such as butter, flour, sugar, coffee and lard. They would patiently pull the wagon through a path in the hedges to the buildings left to them. Without this extra food, they would have been hard pressed to feed the orphans and the other children who came each day to school. As Christmas approached we began to plan a party for all of these children as well as those of our civilian employees. At the time, each of the military personnel and the USO people were receiving 8 candy bars a week. We posted a sign asking that everyone, give part of this ration as gifts to the children at the party. Generosity soon filled containers with enough candy to give the entire population of Chatou a monstrous stomachache. Candy sent to us included thousands of rolls of colored Lifesavers. For some reason very few of these were taken as part of any ones allotment and they were leftover in the PX. The chefs made up cakes and cookies enough to feed everyone and I arranged for a French company to produce sufficient ice cream for all. We furnished ingredients for the ice cream and the company produced the finished product. They were paid by both giving them money and their skimming what they considered an unnoticeable quantity of the powdered milk, powdered eggs, sugar and vanilla we gave them. We factored this into our calculations as this was expected. Our civilian waitresses all pitched in to make packets of the candy bars for each child. We taped the four huge mirrors in the hall to look like small paned windows. We finished the holiday decorating by mixing flour and water into paste to glue cotton to the lower portions of the panes to give the effect of wind blown snow piled in these areas. It really began to look like a Christmas scene. White tablecloths and the crystal chandeliers, now containing low watt bulbs, nearly finished the picture. What was lacking was a Christmas tree. Where were we to find a suitable tree? There were woods around so we organized a group of five to get that TREE. Taking a meat cleaver from the kitchen, no axes handy, we took one of our trucks and headed toward Versailles, we knew of several woods along that route. We saw several sites but none of the trees seemed suitable, Soon we were within sight of the Palace and there on the Palace grounds about 50 feet from the edge of the road was a stand of exquisite trees. They were about 15 feet tall and were part of the nursery producing trees and plants to replace ones in the Palace gardens. OUR TREE was the third one in the second row of the group. About 25 gardeners were working roughly 100 yards from the trees. I jumped from the truck and ran toward our tree. At the first blow of the cleaver the gardeners started running toward me, yelling profanities and waving various garden implements. Quickly cutting the tree and dragging it behind me to the road I threw the end to the men in the already moving truck, and caught the hands reaching for me. Dillinger never made a better getaway. We sent THE TREE to our motor pool and had the ends of the limbs sprayed with white paint. The scenery shop wired the tree to take 40-watt bulbs and also sent us cords from German parachutes, which were used to make costumes for our USO, shows. The white cords were the perfect size to loop and insert in the hole in the center of several thousand of the colored Lifesavers from the PX and were then wound around the tree from top to bottom. Around the base we placed a white tablecloth and fake packages in colored paper. The party was noisy, messy, crowded and a huge success. Everyone admired THE TREE; the Commanding officer and the Irish Mother Superior could not stop congratulating us on the outcome of our efforts. I have often wondered how many others have had a Christmas tree from the Palace of Versailles (and if I am still wanted by the French Government).     James T. Walsh holds degrees in both business and law and has traveled the world as an executive of several international companies. He fought in the 86th Infantry division and spent a year in Paris with the USO. After the war, he married his high school sweetheart and together they’ve raised five children. The couple now make their home in Arizona. Copyright (c) Paris New Media, L.L.C.