In World War II, two young American men who had never traveled a hundred miles from their homes suddenly found themselves thousands of miles from their own nation. Private Will Campbell was one such soldier, known today as a courageous minister in the civil rights movement and award winning author. Campbell enlisted in the army at 18 and was stationed at Saipan as a medic.
Here, Campbell relates his experience crossing the Pacific in a Liberty ship.
It was December 1943, and we were on a crowded troopship bound for the South Pacific. Most of us were in our teens, seasick, homesick, and a little afraid. I had asked my best pal, Herman Hyman, what he was going to send his girlfriend for Christmas. Nothing, he answered, seemed strange. He mumbled something about Hanukkah and changed the subject.
I had no idea what he meant. I was a naive little Baptist boy from rural Mississippi. Herman was from the Bronx. What had promised to be a bleak Christmas turned even more dreary when the CP list was read over the ship’s intercom. I was to be on kitchen duty on Christmas Day. The sergeant told us we would be crossing the International Date Line, so there would be 2nd December 25th.
I’ll do it for you, Herman said. Why? Because I won’t do it. Patting me on the head like a mascot. Herman was older than I. At the end of the second Christmas in a row, Herman found me alone on the stern of the ship, looking back at where we had been. He looked very tired. He handed me a can of ripe olives he had lifted from the officer’s mess.
Merry Christmas, he said, with a feigned and fatigued.
Ho ho ho!
Why did you do that? I asked over and over. He sat in a sort of. You really don’t know, do you? Fashion. Then he answered, because I’m a Jew, little buddy, and Jews don’t celebrate Christmas. And he told me all about Hanukkah, about another war that was fought 200 years before my Jesus was even born. About how the Maccabees whipped the Syrians in the big celebration and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem.
He said we would have a big celebration one day. He told me about how his father would light a candle every night for eight nights, about the good food his mother prepared, and they named all the kinfolk who gathered. There weren’t any Jews in my little rural community. No Catholics or Methodists or Presbyterians, either. Just Baptists. But there was a Jew there when I got back.
Herman Hyman died for his country and the last days of the war. And when the war ended and I went home to Mississippi, Herman went with me. Happy Hanukkah, Herman. You would be 76 now. I light the eighth candle, and we will be together again. And tell Father Abraham it’s my time for Cape May.
Tags: Memoir