Christmas Eve Laments 1944: No Silent Night in Bastogne ~ New on the Bryan William Brickner Blog

Soldier's Silent Night

“A lament under the fire of guns,” opened Bryan W. Brickner, “as one is besieged by ruins, blood and death, is an effort of human illumination.”

In ChristmasEve Laments 1944: No Silent Night in Bastogne ~ New on the Bryan William Brickner Blog, a human’s lament during the German siege of American forces in Bastogne (Belgium) is used in celebration and honor this Christmas Eve. Political theorist Bryan W. Brickner, author of The Promise Keepers (1999): Politics and Promises, finds praise in the spirit of Leo Barron and Don Cygan’s WW II book, No Silent Night: The Christmas Day Battle for Bastogne (2012).

“Barron and Cygan,” observed Brickner, “cover the Bastogne confrontation between German tanks and American infantry with acuity; it was expected concerning the tactical and strategic: they surprised me with the spiritual.”

“The authors,” Brickner continued, “show their spirit, and the spirit of their book, by prefacing No Silent Night with a German officer’s Christmas night lamentation, found days later scrawled on a schoolhouse chalkboard. Seventy years on and the soldier’s sorrow rings eternal in its human, all too humanness.”

“Perseverance and patience” added Brickner, “are trends in war; tomorrow we’ll take a look at the Christmas Day battle from one officer’s viewpoint, Lt. Colonel John T. Cooper, who has a soldier’s day like Lt. James Monroe did in 1776 at Trenton.”

“This evening, pause in Peace,” closed Brickner, “for that holy infant, so tender and mild … in all of us.”

Brickner has a 1997 political science doctorate from Purdue University and is the author of several political theory books, to include Article the first of the Bill of Rights (2006) and The Book of the Is (2013); he also writes political fiction, such as the novella thereafter (2013). The Bryan William Brickner Blog is an ongoing resource for the political science of constitutions and the biological science of receptors.

Part II Tomorrow: 70 years from Christmas Day 1944: Perseverance, Patience and Victory in Bastogne.