Christmas Eve

It was Christmas Eve at Sapporo, Japan, Camp Drake. 

On Christmas eve, 1951 I walked over to the theatre at Camp Drake in Sapporo, Japan. I’d just rejoined the 1st Cav., returning from hospitals following being wounded in Korea. They had an announcement that there would be a U.S.O. show there.  Both Bob Hope and Danny Kaye were in the Far East and we had hopes that we would see some stars that evening. Instead, there was a small six-piece group called Snub Mosley and his band, an all-black group with a light skinned lady singer.  Snub Mosley was known as the guy who invented the slide saxophone. He had once recorded at a session or two with Satchmo Armstrong and was the author of a song titled Pretty Eyed Baby. It was a really hot band and I loved the music.  They played an arrangement that contained some great melodies including a segment from George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. And then that lady stood up and sang this lyric, “My dear, if you should stray, a million miles away, I will always be in love with you.” And I was so lonely and yet so happy to still be alive after all of the deaths and horror I had witnessed, and I felt like I was a million miles away from home right then and tears came streaming down my cheeks and I will never forget how much that U.S.O. Show meant to me that night. God Bless the U.S.O.