Frontier Soldiers’ Christmas

Austerity, fear and monotony were routine at frontier army posts. Christmas offered a much needed break in that routine. Festivities and various amusements were often planned for enlisted men as well as the officers and their families. Sometimes soldiers would enact a play or tableau on Christmas Eve. If available, a Christmas tree might be set up, especially if a number of children lived on the post. Image from The Project Gutenberg Ebook of Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army LIfe, by Charles King

Quoting from the Army and Navy Register in 1886:

Every child in the garrison, Officers’, soldiers’, laundresses’, civilian employees’ little ones were all there and each and every one found a toy, an apple, an orange, a bag of candy and popcorn ‘galore.’ Santa Claus appeared and appointed Major Brown and Lieutenant Barth, Twelfth Infantry, to distribute the gifts.

Twenty years earlier a Christmas ball was held at Fort McPherson, Nebraska. As reported in the Omaha Daily Herald, 

[The ball] was well attended . . . The decorations were extremely elegant and tasteful, and the floor in good order comfortable to dance upon. . . The soldiers behaved, as soldiers should, like gentlemen . . . The officers of the garrison were present and were noticeable for their urbanity toward private soldiers. (Sounds a tad condescending, doesn’t it.)

However, on other posts, Christmas passed without much fanfare. Pvt. Wilmot P. Sanford, Co, D, Sixth Infantry, said of Christmas at Fort Buford, North Dakota:

Monday, December 25, 1876. Clear and cold 28 below. Came off guard in the morning and to the quarters the rest of the day. Having a good drink. Corn, peaches, jelly, butter, duff (a stiff flour pudding) and roast beef and gravy and whiskey drinks. . . Half the company were drunk before night. Not a very merry Christmas!

Christmas in the field was even more dreary, miserable and sometimes dangerous. Sgt. Herman Werner recalled campaigning in Montana: 

Christmas eve of 1884 found us not in the Holy Land. The Bethlehem for troop L, First Cavalry, in the year of 1884 was within the fastness of the Little Rocky Mountains, Montana, on a day when a temperature of forty-two below zero painfully penetrated to the very marrow of man and beast.

In the field near Camp Verde, Arizona, contract Surgeon Henry R. Porter wrote a letter to his father at Christmas, 1872. 

I will close by wishing you all a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. I should like to be there and eat one of Mother’s famous apple dumplings or plum puddings but I shall be obliged to content myself eating my Christmas dinner on the ground and made up of whatever we can get.

On a winter campaign led by General George R. Crook, Sgt. James Bryon Kincaid recorded: 

Christmas morning of 1876 was a morning that will be remembered by the men of the campaigns long as life exists. About two o’clock a.m. I awoke, being too cold to sleep longer; or as the boys term it – I froze out, and left the tent.The moon was shining and I saw the sentry was pacing back and forth in front of Gen. Crook’s Quarters. I went over to him and asked if he had any fire, he said he would say not for there was not wood enough in 20 miles to boil a cup of coffee. “Did you freeze out?” he asked, Well you might as well join the rest.” “What do you men,” I asked. “Why look down the valley; they are walking to keep from freezing to death.” I did and in the pale moonlight I could see five or six hundred men walking to keep life in the bodies.”

Let’s remember the soldiers who served then and now in far off places, away from their loved ones during the holidays, often under terrible conditions, and be grateful for their service to our country.