PRESERVING A MILITARY LEGACY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
The following Reflection represents SGT Bruce Kevin Blair’s legacy of their military service from 1979 to 1991. If you are a Veteran, consider preserving a record of your own military service, including your memories and photographs, on Togetherweserved.com (TWS), the leading archive of living military history. The Service Reflections is an easy-to-complete self-interview, located on your TWS Military Service Page, which enables you to remember key people and events from your military service and the impact they made on your life.
What Was Your Most Memorable Xmas From Your Military Service? What Made It So Memorable?
It was December 1990. I was at Fort McCoy, WI, getting ready to be deployed to the sandbox for Desert Shield in Saudi Arabia. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and the CIA gave us a briefing. The agent told us that if fighting breaks out over there, 1 out of 3 of us probably won’t come back home. On Christmas Eve, a major snowstorm and ice storm hit the Midwest. Many of our wives were carpooling in a van and driving a great distance to get a chance to see us one last time, which would be on Christmas day since we were deploying right after Christmas. We were allowed to see our wives on Christmas Eve and Christmas night only. On Christmas Eve, my first sergeant called me into his office to let a few other soldiers and me know that the Red Cross had contacted them with bad news. Our wives were in a terrible accident, and the van they were traveling in was involved in a slide-off on the interstate about 4 hours away near Chicago and, tumbled over a couple of times and landed upside down in a ditch. All were taken by ambulance to the hospital; however, we did not know who was injured and how badly injured we already had in the back of our minds we might never see our wives again once we deployed if war were to break out.
It’s Christmas Day now, and we have not heard any info on our wives. We were still in limbo, knowing this would be the last day or night to see them. Christmas evening, right before Christmas Dinner, my Sergeant told me that the Red Cross called back, and the wives were all treated and released and were looking to find a rental van to try to still make it, which would be until the 26th of December. My first sergeant said that there were 5 wives involved in the accident, and we are now going to be deploying a couple of days later to take the next 2 days off duty with our spouses and report back on the 28th. On the 26th, my wife arrived, and we stayed at the Downtown Hotel in Sparta, WI, and on the 27th was our 11th anniversary. This was a Christmas miracle and a Christmas that I will never forget, and we will be celebrating our 45th anniversary on the 27th of this year, right after Christmas in 2024. Every year, on the 24th through the 28th, I relive that time period and think to myself, what a Christmas blessing!
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