By Marijune Wissmann

Christmas l945 was bittersweet. It was sweet in the sense that World War II was over and the boys would be coming home. But it was bitter when we remembered that thousands of servicemen would never come home. They were buried in military cemeteries in Europe, North Africa, Asia and the islands of the Pacific, and entombed in sunken naval vessels at the bottom of the ocean.

After V-E Day, many soldiers from the European Theater were shipped to the United States. They enjoyed a brief furlough before they received orders to report to Army bases on the West Coast to train for the inevitable invasion of Japan.

It was estimated that Gen. George Marshall’s plan to invade Japan island by island would have cost a half-million American lives. The atomic bomb saved those lives as well as those of about 400,000 prisoners of war and civilian detainees held by the Japanese.

On a bitterly cold, wintry evening, a Chicago railroad station was filled with hundreds of troops coming home. My roommate, Betty Jane, and I also waited for a train that would take us to Northern Michigan for the Christmas holidays.

Many of the soldiers were still shaky from a rough midwinter trip across the Atlantic. These were corn-fed boys who had gone to war in 1941 and they were now returning. Returning servicemen from the South Pacific were not yet acclimated to the frigid weather of the Midwest; and they shivered with cold.

As that train pulled out of the station and traveled through Northern Illinois, more dischargees boarded at Fort Sheridan and Great Lakes Naval Station. The diner was packed, so we bought sandwiches from a vendor in Milwaukee – a slice of bologna between two slices of dry bread. As we approached small towns in Wisconsin, snow-covered figures waited for returning heroes. We watched emotional reunions through the frost-covered windows of our coach. At one town, a large, beautifully lit Christmas tree stood on the platform, surrounded by a crowd. At the corner of the platform, a group of carolers sang Christmas songs.

When a young soldier stepped of the train, two burly men lifted him above their shoulders while everyone cheered his arrival. Then they gently set him down and a pretty young girl rushed up and embraced him. The servicemen in the car whistled and cheered as the train pulled away from the station.

The carolers‘ voices drifted into the car and my roommate, who had a lovely voice, joined in the song. From the other end of the car, the voice of at tired baritone sang along and the two harmonized the beautiful old carol, Silent Night.

When they finished, everyone in the car applauded and the mood brightened considerably. Someone passed around a flask of brandy, and the conductor passed out Pullman pillows and turned up the heat in the car. We fell into a restless sleep.

The next morning I awoke with a scratchy throat, a headache and a fever. The train was moving slowly, plowing, through huge snowdrifts as we finally reached our destination. Dad was waiting with the old Packard, which he drove skillfully over the ice and through snowdrifts to our home. After at hot bath I went to bed. I remained there for the entire vacation, missing the welcome-home parties and visits from friends and relatives.

On January 1, 1946 recovered from the flu, I boarded the old train for the trip back to Chicago. On my way back to the university, I met a handsome naval cadet who told me he was from California and was anxious to get back to the sunshine. At that moment I decided I would marry this young man who would take me away from this cold city, and 11 months later, I did.