Christmas Eve 1944 . It's twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Stalag Luft 111, a German prisoner-of-war camp near Zagan in Poland. The guards have kept the lights on late as a special gesture, but fifteen thousand prisoners from many nations are still weak, hungry, and cold.

Many of them have spent the evening trudging through the snow from compound to compound, exchanging Christmas greetings in a variety of languages and observing how the members of each cultural group are making a brave effort to recapture what Christmas means to them.

Furman J. Davis, then a twenty-one-year-old navigator in the US Eighth Air Force (305th Bomb Group), which had been flying out of Chelveston airfield, near Northampton, England, takes up the story:

"Some prisoners had made little trees. Some had created manger scenes on their windowsills. And they had all tried to be creative with their Spam and corned beef. The real treat was sugared bread, a bit like American cookies.

"We shared our traditional Christmas songs and wished each other a merry Christmas, knowing that each of us had a deep, well-hidden sadness and a desperate longing for our loved ones back home. In the eleven months I was in that camp, I never got a single letter from home. I tell you, we all cried that night. Our pillows got awfully wet.

"Then, some twenty minutes after lights out, across the snow from the perimeter of the camp came the subdued sound of men's voices singing—in German. It was the guards, risking harsh discipline to help their captives feel the spirit of the occasion. It was unbelievable!

"Those Germans were all good singers, and they sounded like angels. They sang carols we knew, and then moved closer to our barracks. Quietly, they came in and placed some articles on our tables, taking their lives in their hands in an extraordinary gesture of Christian fellowship.

"Next morning, we discovered that everyone in the camp had been given an extra ration of bread, four eggs, an onion, a small writing pencil, and a few pages of writing paper. I knew that Christ had been in the hearts of everyone that night!

"In our combine we gave one another gifts that often involved great personal sacrifice but came with much love and goodwill. My gift was especially appropriate. I'd gotten so badly beaten up by the Germans when our Flying Fortress—a B17G—was brought down near Munich that I couldn't walk properly. One of my buddies gave me a beautifully carved walking stick.

"One young man, who had lost all his hair through malnutrition, gave away his most prized possession, a pocket comb. I had saved up my black military-ration bread, and gave six of my friends a big slice for breakfast."

True spirit of Christmas

For more than fifty years, Mr. Davis and his wife Mary, whom he married two weeks after Pearl Harbor, have relived these aspects of what he calls his worst and his best Christmas, and he told us he is grateful that he has never felt any bitterness.

"On the night I was captured and held for interrogation in a rat-infested dungeon, I made up my mind that I would not hate these people. I would never have survived if I had carried hatred in my heart. I knew that God was in my life, and that there were things to be grateful for.

"Since the war, I have been back to Germany several times, and have looked up the people who showed kindness to me. Some of my friends here in Florida have been surprised that I could go back and not feel any hostility. But I've always said, 'Life is too precious to be worried about whom we're going to be mad at.'

"As a kid of about ten, I remember a mentor of mine persuading me to learn Bible verses by saying to me: 'Till you got 'em memorized, there'll be no cake or ice cream.' Well, in that prison camp I had no problem remembering John 14, verses 1 and 2, and that helped a great deal: 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.'

"How comforting that is—no matter where we are; no matter how extreme the circumstances. That night in Stalag 111, I witnessed a new birth of Christ's love in the hearts and souls of my captors, and I am so grateful to have known the true spirit of Christmas."