NOW, all you homesick rookies who are blue on Christmas Day,

Though bunked in pleasant barracks, come listen to my lay!

When you're stationed snug at Flagler, Leavenworth, or Hampton Roads,

Where the postman three times daily brings your Christmas cheer in loads,

What ground have you for kicking? You would glorify your fate

If you'd been in old Fort Buford on Christmas, '68!

Just a bunch of squatty cabins built of cottonwoods and clay

With roofs of sod and sedge-grass and windows stuffed with hay,

And when the winter blizzards came howling overhead

And we couldn't reach the timber, we burned our bunks, instead,

While, camped around the gullies, lay five hundred Sioux in wait;

That's how we stood at Buford on Christmas, '68!

We were out beyond the border a thousand miles or more,

A wilderness of drifting snows behind us and before;

Just a bunch of U. S. doughboys, hollow-eyed from march and fight,

For you bet we all kept busy with Sitting Bull in sight,

And our old buzz-saw he'd captured never let us sleep too late

When he used it as a war-drum around Christmas, '68!

I remember well that morning, it was twenty-four below,

With a bright sun striking crystals from the endless fields of snow.

We had finished with our breakfast of beans and bacon-fat,

When someone cried, "Look yonder, along the bluffs! What's that?"

We looked, then cheered like demons. The mail-guard, sure as fate!

A welcome sight, I tell you, on Christmas, '68!

They ploughed in through the snow-drifts across the barrack-yard,

Their fur caps rimmed with hoar-frost, their horses breathing hard.

They bore orders from headquarters, but we soldiers bade them hail

Because they'd brought us, also, our sacks of Christmas mail.

We had never hoped till springtime to have that precious freight;

Was it strange it raised our spirits on Christmas, '68?

We crowded in a corner around old Sergeant "Jack"—

A Santa Claus in chevrons with a mail-bag for his pack—

And with horse-play, yells, and laughter we greeted every flight

As he called the names and fired them their bundles left and right.

For some there came no tokens, but they kept their faces straight

And smiled at others' fortune on Christmas, '68.

"Tom Flint!" A woollen muffler from his sister back in Maine.

"James Bruce!" His father'd sent him a silver watch and chain.

"Hans Goetz!" A flute and song-book from the far-off Baltic's shore.

"George Kent!" A velvet album from his folks in Baltimore.

And how we cheered the pictures from the girls in every State

To their sweethearts in the army, on Christmas, '68!

"Fred Gray!" A sudden silence fell on that noisy place.

Poor Fred lay in the foot-hills with the snow above his face.

But his bunkie loosed the package of its wrappings, one by one—

'Twas a Bible from his mother, with a blessing for her son.

And the hardest heart was softened as we thought of our deadmate

And that lonely, stricken mother on Christmas, '68.

But the Sergeant raised the shadow as he shouted, "Jerry Clegg!"

In hospital was Jerry with a bullet through his leg—

The gayest lad in Buford—-and we plunged out through the drifts

To take his package to him, forgetting our own gifts.

'Twas a green silk vest from Dublin, and, bedad, it sure was great

To hear old Jerry chuckle on Christmas, '68!

Thus it went, with joke and banter—what a romping time we had!

The redskins in the coulÉes must have thought we'd gone clean mad,

For they started popping bullets at the sentinels on guard

And we had to stop our nonsense, and sortie good and hard.

But that was daily routine—always got it, soon or late—

If we hadn't, we'd felt lonely on Christmas, '68.

So I'm here to tell you rookies who are kicking on your lot

That you don't know service hardship as we got it, served up hot,

For the Philippines are easy and Hawaii is a snap

When compared to fighting Injins over all the Western map,

And, next time you start to growling when your mail's an hour late,

Just recall the boys at Buford, on Christmas, '68!

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