Christmas memories
For veteran, Dec. 25, 1944, is still vivid

Christmas Day conjures up memories of bad chicken and sandy beaches for one Oklahoma City resident.

Eric Smedlund was a U.S. Navy petty officer stationed in the Pacific Ocean in 1944, only a few months before the end of World War II.

Smedlund, 80, said he remembers how much better Christmas dinner tasted at home in Momence, Ill., about 50 miles south of Chicago. The military's Christmas dinner didn't measure up.

"That chicken had been frozen so long that when we ate it and took a bite, we held our breath, Smedlund said. "It didn't taste that bad, but the smell was horrible.

He and others in a small band of Navy signalmen stationed on the island nation of New Guinea, now known as Papua New Guinea, sought creative ways of reaching out to family members.

Military regulations barred servicemen from revealing their precise location to friends and family. Allied forces had cleared much of the island of Japanese forces only a month earlier.

"Being young, quick-witted Americans, we figured out a way to let our families know where we were, said Smedlund, who was 18.

Sailors posed for a photograph and spelled out the name of the coastal city of Aitape using semaphore, a system of signaling represented by the position of the arms.

One of the sailors sent the film to his wife in Huntington Beach, Calif. She had it developed and shared copies of the photograph with families of the other sailors pictured in the photo.

Smedlund, who still has the barely visible black-and-white photo, said his mother did not receive the photograph until March 1945.

Not long after the photo was taken, the amphibious signal unit was split up. Most were assigned to duty aboard ships. Smedlund was sent to the USS Medusa, a 10,000-pound repair ship that survived Pearl Harbor and spent the balance of the war sailing the southwest Pacific, patching battle damaged vessels.

Navy enlistment was a natural for Smedlund, whose Finnish father sailed to the United States at age 9 to visit family and later sailed the world in the late 1800s.

Smedlund visited Oklahoma for the first time in the summer of 1948, when he drove historic Route 66 from college in Greenville, N.C., to Oklahoma City to court his future wife, Jeanne, whom he met at Bob Jones University.

"We dated and went to church, and I asked her to marry me, he said. "We were married on Christmas Eve 1948. I came to a city and a girl that were mighty pretty.

Smedlund served as associate pastor at the former Cashion Place Baptist Church near NW 30 and Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma City. After finishing his education, he served part time at the 40th Street Baptist Church in Oklahoma City and later was full time at the city's Metropolitan Baptist Church.

Smedlund spent most of his adult life as a bivocational associate Baptist preacher. He was ordained in 1954 at Metropolitan Baptist.

He retired in 1997 but still heads up outreach at Metropolitan.

Smedlund said troops stationed overseas this December likely will be thinking thoughts similar to the ones he remembers from more than six decades ago.

"They're thinking about all the good times they had, he said. "They'll be thinking, They're opening presents (at home). Boy, I wish I could be there.'

Smedlund said on Christmas Day 1944 he was thinking about his family attending Christmas services at church without him.

And Christmas dinner with no bad smells.

Archive ID: 2872364