Metropolitan Airport NewsMetropolitan Airport News
  • Airport News
    • Publisher’s Message
    • Fast Five
    • On Duty
    • Air Cargo
    • Airline News
    • Airport Community
    • Airport Employment News
    • Airport Safety & Security
    • Company Spotlight
    • Ground Services
    • Intermodal
    • New York Aviation History
    • Non-Rev Traveler
  • Airport & Aviation Events
  • Airport Employment
  • Latest Issue
  • Login

Subscribe for Updates

Get the latest local airport and aviation news delivered right into your inbox each week!

News Updates

Learn about Opportunities at Terminal 6

February 2, 2023

JFK Millennium Partners

February 2, 2023

JFK Shredding Day!

February 2, 2023
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Metropolitan Airport NewsMetropolitan Airport News
  • Airport News
    • Publisher’s Message
    • Fast Five
    • On Duty
    • Air Cargo
    • Airline News
    • Airport Community
    • Airport Employment News
    • Airport Safety & Security
    • Company Spotlight
    • Ground Services
    • Intermodal
    • New York Aviation History
    • Non-Rev Traveler
  • Airport & Aviation Events
  • Airport Employment
  • Latest Issue
  • Login
Metropolitan Airport NewsMetropolitan Airport News
Home»New York Aviation History»Christmas Eve at The Front
New York Aviation History

Christmas Eve at The Front

Originally published in "The American Legion" magazine, Nov. 2018
Don KeithBy Don KeithDecember 11, 2022No Comments5 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email

The world of 1943 was so simple. Most homes had a radio receiver as their only communications media. Getting news about WWII boiled down to radio broadcasts and “Movietone Film News” if you were a movie-goer. On Christmas eve of 1943, the USO in conjunction with armed forces radio decided to bring the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby USO show to families across the United States. These special radio broadcasts united Americans with their loved ones deployed around the world.


The night before Christmas 1943, millions of Americans are sitting before their radios, their dial lamps offering a bit of cheer, awaiting a show scheduled to begin at the top of the hour. It was one of those rare media events, usually reserved for President Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” 

But on that one winter night, all four major radio networks- CBS, NBC-Red, NBC-Blue, and Mutual – devoted their airwaves to a single program featuring several amateur singers and musicians, along with jokes and sketches. The radio broadcast, “Christmas at the Front,” gave U.S. audiences a real-time glimpse of soldiers and sailors deployed around the world that holiday season and allowed those service members to speak to their folks back home via the fastest-growing mass medium of the day.

Technicians had worked for months to pull off a feat thought impossible only a few years before, bringing live voices from various worldwide spots to a single point and rebroadcasting to eager listeners at home. The first Trans-Atlantic telephone cable was still a decade away; communication satellites were the stuff of science fiction. This big show depended on relatively new technology and the vagaries of shortwave signal propagation.

It was the idea of the U.S. Military, which believed real-time broadcast would be a tremendous morale boost for the fighting forces and their families back home. And when it became time to pick the show’s primary host, the choice was obvious. 

Bob Hope’s network radio show commanded a large weekly audience at the time. His first film was the “Big Broadcast of 1938,” in which he introduced his theme song for hundreds of Hope’s USO shows between 1941 and 1991. 

However, the first voice heard in the “Christmas Eve at the Front” broadcast is not Hope, but actor Lionel Barrymore’s portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in the annual radio production of “A Christmas Carol” made it appropriate that he be part of the show. He promised to take listeners “By the hand to the side of your loved ones fighting in every corner of the globe” – including Italy, North Africa, New Guinea, Guadalcanal, New Caledonia and China (where it was already Christmas), India, Panama, Alaska, Pearl Harbor, and even on some of the ships of “our Navy”. 

Barrymore then introduces Hope, whose name is synonymous with joy, to the GI. When greeted with loud applause, Hope quips, “Thanks relatives” After a few zingers, the most challenging part of the new production begins. 

The first stop is Algiers in North Africa. The signal takes a bit of time, but an unidentified voice says it is just after 3 AM as he reads from a prepared script. He tells listeners that this will be a typical day for the men working there. Next, a soldier from Sheffield, Alabama, comes on the mic and says in a deep Alabama drawl about how he and his fellow soldiers spent Christmas eve so far from home. 

It is difficult for us today – accustomed as we are to high-definition live communications from anywhere on earth to imagine how impressive this short, wavering presentation was to millions sitting in their living rooms around the country. Indeed, most had heard Edward R. Murrow as he dramatically described the Nazi bombing of London live as it happened, using a shortwave transmitter. But the voice the audience heard tonight was an ordinary guy, a soldier, whose transmission wraps with, “We return you to America.” There may have been wishful thinking in those five simple words.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope

Bing Crosby, Hope’s usual foil and movie partner, joins the broadcast then, along with the Army Air Force orchestra with a quick chorus of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” 

Except for atmospheric noise and some fading, most of the remote shortwave transmissions were surprisingly listenable; others were difficult to understand as some transmission paths did not work. Nevertheless, Hope, Crosby, and the crew handled it smoothly, ad-libbing until they could verify that there would be “no bit” from that corner of the globe. 

Despite expected technical hitches, this historic broadcast almost certainly accomplished its goals. Families felt a bit closer to their loved ones – more than 3.5 million Americans were deployed overseas at the time of the show – on this special night of the year.

As noted, Hope was not finished with his efforts to make wars a bit more tolerable for those who were bravely fighting them. He entertained the troops, at home and in war zones, for more than 60 years, performing in more than 200 USO shows for men and women in uniform. Hope lived to 100, and in October 1997 U.S. House Joint Resolution 75 was signed into law giving him honorary veteran status for his humanitarian work with the military.

“Christmas at the Front” can be heard today in its entirety below – blemishes and all.

Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email
Don Keith
  • Website
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Don Keith is a best-selling author and award-winning broadcast journalist. He writes both fiction and nonfiction, including extensively about World War II history. Award-winning and best-selling author Don Keith has lived in the South all his life and is a graduate of the University of Alabama with a degree in Broadcast and Film. As a broadcast journalist, he won awards from the Associated Press and United Press International for news writing and reporting and was also the first winner of Troy University’s Hector Award for innovation in broadcast journalism. As an on-the-air broadcaster, Don was twice named Billboard Magazine "Radio Personality of the Year." His first novel, THE FOREVER SEASON, received the Alabama Library Association’s "Fiction of the Year" award. He has since published forty books, fiction and non-fiction, including several nationally best-selling thrillers. One of those, FIRING POINT, was the basis for the hit motion picture HUNTER KILLER, starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman.

RELATED NEWS & UPDATES

United States Mint Begins Shipping 2023 American Women Quarters Program Coins Honoring Bessie Coleman

U.S. Mint Begins Shipping 2023 Bessie Coleman Quarters

January 27, 2023
The Tuskeegee Airmen

New York Native Tuskegee Airman Turns 100

January 20, 2023
Republic Airlines: Pieces of the Puzzle

Republic Airlines: Pieces of the Puzzle

January 10, 2023
Capitol Airlines DC-3 at LaGuardia Airport.

Capitol Air

December 10, 2022
Cornelia Fort

Remembering Cornelia Fort, On a Date Which Will Live in Infamy

December 7, 2022
Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island

Roosevelt Field: The Airport

November 14, 2022
Add A Comment

Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

AIRPORT & AVIATION EVENTS
JFK Rotary Club Monthly Dinner Meeting
February 08, 2023
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Vetro Restaurant & Lounge
Howard Beach, New York
LGA Kiwanis Club Monthly Meeting
February 09, 2023
12:00 PM (Noon) to 2:00 PM
AirCargo 2023
February 12, 2023 - February 14, 2023
Omni Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
  • >> More Airport & Aviation Events

Subscribe for Weekly Email Updates

Get the latest local airport news, events, and jobs delivered right into your inbox each week.

Metropolitan Airport News provides timely news, information and updates for both Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) employees and businesses that provide services at, and around the major New York airports (JFK, LGA, EWR).

John F. Kennedy International Airport
PO Box 300877
Jamaica, NY 11430 USA
Phone: (347) 396-0904
Email Us

Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Flickr
JANUARY 2023 ISSUE
Metropolitan Airport News - January 2023
LATEST COMMENTS
  • mark hopkins on Capitol Air
  • Airportlife2017 on The New Terminal One at JFK
  • Carol Simon Levin on Remembering Cornelia Fort, On a Date Which Will Live in Infamy
  • About Us
  • Advertising Options
  • Charitable Giving Program
  • Back Issue Archive
  • Contact Us
© 2023 Airport Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.