Christmas Mass in the Ardennes

The German offensive through the Ardennes began on December 16, 1944, and Christmas fell nine days into it. Villages changed hands two and three times. Churches with their roofs blown off served as aid stations, command posts and, when a chaplain could be found, as churches.

Here a priest says midnight Mass at a candlelit altar in a shelled nave, snow drifting down through the open roof. Soldiers fill the pews with their helmets in their laps. Along the aisle the wounded lie on stretchers and hear it from there.

Earlier that month Patton had asked his chaplain for a prayer for clear weather, and a quarter of a million copies were printed on cards with a Christmas greeting on the back. The sky cleared on December 23.

One shaft of gray daylight comes down through the shattered vault and lands on the altar, where the priest in white is the smallest and brightest figure in the room. Everything nearer the viewer is candlelight — dozens of small flames along the walls, catching the backs of helmets and the edges of pews. A soldier in the foreground has turned to glance over his shoulder, helmet in hand. Down the aisle the stretchers lie in a row. Snow drifts in and settles on everything, and nobody brushes it off.