Tag: Christmas

Merry Christmas!

In Germany and some other countries (like my native Sweden), Christmas Eve is the beginning of the festivities, with the gift-giving and food on the 24th. The guys in the photo look happy and relaxed, with furnished winter quarters allowing for Christmas cheer in comfort. The tree is decorated with tinsel and ornaments, the lit candles providing both ambience and a fire hazard.

Two of the soldiers wear the V-necked Army issue sweaters, while the two men in the back wear “M40” uniforms with the Eastern Front Medal ribbons, indicating that the photo was taken during Christmas in 1942.

Xmas2
A German Christmas card from 1939, showing a soldier standing
guard at the western border during the “Phoney War”.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and send a thought to the men and women in uniform serving while away from their families and loved ones.

Christmas Eve 1942

This rather dour lot should be all smiles, as they can enjoy Christmas in the safety of Germany, instead of on the Eastern Front. On the radio, they could hear the news about the struggle in Stalingrad, where the 6th Army was slowly squeezed to death.

The men are mostly in their 40s, members of Landesschützen-Bataillon 410 in Sigmaringen in Wehrkreis V, the military district encompassing the counties Baden and Württemberg in southwestern Germany. The town was just a small garrison town, and the men of the Landesschützen-Bataillon were stationed there for local security and to guard prisoners of war. Things got a bit more exciting in 1944, when the collaborationist Vichy Government under Marshal Pétain relocated from France to the relative safety of Germany. The local noble family was evicted from their castle, which became the seat of the Vichy Govern-ment until two weeks before the end of the war, when Free French forces captured Sigmaringen and the collaborators.

Anyway, the men in the photo could sit out the war in safety, probably without even firing a single shot in anger. That surely must count as a Christmas gift that kept on giving, all things considered.