Christmas in Germany

My most memorable Christmas Eve was in 1970 during my 27 months of U.S. Army service in Berlin.  That summer I had found my German relatives.  They did not think they were lost because they were on the same farm in Ostfriesland that my great-grandfather had last visited in 1905.  Contact had been lost during the two world wars.  We had one letter with a postal address so vague that it took some detective work.

We walked on a beautiful and cold night to their village church and sang the German hymns that I recognized from English translations.  Across the moor we could hear the bells of other churches.  On Christmas 1969 I had caused a brief sensation at G-2 by typing a prayer of thanks for peace into a classified log of Soviet and East German military activity; thanks that nothing was happening.  I had supposed that working that day so that the married men could be with their families was a reward in itself, but 1970 in Ostfriesland set a mark that has not been passed in my 75 years.  In 1969 peace to me meant the absence of war.  Peace that icy night in 1970 seemed to mean much more.

[As I learned through coincidences of Army postings near distant cousins and through the internet, I had relatives on both sides of the Normandy landings.]

Photo shows a typical house and attached barn in Ostfriesland.