The first Christmas that I spent away from home was in 1917. It was my twentieth and I was a machine-gun officer in France, in a quiet part of the line, in charge of an isolated nest of guns, commanding a valley down which the German offensive was expected to deploy. It was a day like any other. There could be no church service. Christmas mail had arrived days earlier. The extra rations were being kept at details against our return. The weather was relatively clement and in the afternoon I called on a brother officer who had recently joined my company to replace a casualty. I had not yet met him and Christmas Day seemed auspicious. And the Germans three thousand miles away. There was no organized trench system, so I walked across the valley.
A week later that walk got me into trouble. I was relieved before my brother officer and back in details I happened to make a remark about him in the mess. The captain’s head went up. “When did you meet Jones?” he asked. I told him about my visit. “You walked across there in the daylight. Didn’t you realize that his position was under observation from the German lines? We’ll have to change his gun-sites.”
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