O Tannenbaum

(Don Dale 1967 photo)

As Weihnachten -- Christmas -- rolled around in December of 1967, my roommates and I decided we wanted a Christmas tree in the room. The base and the town were surrounded by forests, so we layered up in warm clothes and set out with a saw.

A 20-minute walk took us into a forest of evergreens, most towering three or four stories tall. We found the small tree you see in the picture above, sawed it down and carried it back through the little crossroads town of Mötsch to the hospital barracks.

One of my roommates bought a star for the top and a string of lights at the PX. We decided it was a GI tree, so we decorated it with GI things -- name tags, airman stripes and several gold epaulets -- and red stars cut out of construction paper. Each of us got a few presents from home through the mail, and we piled them under the tree. Aside from the big tree in the dayroom, ours was the only Tannenbaum in the barracks.

It made Christmas in our room a little merrier, perhaps. But we had unwittingly violated German law six ways from Sunday.

I found out when I was telling the OR's chief medic about our little tree. "You're lucky the Polizei didn't arrest you," he said.

What we didn't know was that the German forest we had invaded was protected by laws with stiff penalties. To chop down a tree you needed a permit, and a forestry official -- the Jägermeister -- had to accompany you and approve the tree selection. You had to pay a fee and pay the Jägermeister. Violators were subject to stiff fines and possible jail time.

And we had merrily carried that tree right through the center of Mötsch and into the hospital barracks. We must have had the Patron Saint of Naïveté sitting on our shoulders.

But it was a cool Christmas tree.