SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT: CHRISTMAS AND WAR IN VIETNAM

In the U.S., Christmas was coming. The stores were decorated in green and red, and the streets had their trees lit up. The prominent places put up Christmas trees for the shoppers to see. The department stores had windows full of mechanical Santas and elves, and they still hired some older man with a beard to play the part of St. Nick for the children.

The radio played Christmas songs, and the shopping centers had tinsel and pictures of reindeer, elves, and Santa in his sleigh. People walked around, looking at little plastic holly, red and green bells, and Santas on trinkets.

On TV, the usual Christmas movies played: Miracle on 34th Street with Edmund Gwenn reprising the role of Santa. It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart trying to make sense of it all. White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, and the many versions of A Christmas Carol.

But in Washington, it was different. Nixon and Kissinger had had enough of the North Vietnamese. They had enough of the communists beating them. The talks had failed. They decided it was time to bomb them into submission.

Operation Linebacker. They dropped over 150,000 tons of bombs. B52s dropped twenty thousand tons in twelve days over Christmas in 1972. Napalm. They hit a village they thought was full of the enemy. The intel…