Twas the night before Christmas and all through the tent was the odor of fuel oil (the stove pipe was bent.) The shoe packs were hung by the oil stove with care in the hopes that they'd issue each man a new pair. The weary GI's were sacked-out on their cots, And visions of sugar-babies danced through their heads. When up on the ridge line there rose such a clatter (A Chinese machine gun had started to chatter.) I rushed to my rifle and through back the bolt. The rest of my tent mates awoke with a jolt.

Outside we could hear platoon Sgt Kelly, a hardnosed man with little pot belly. "Come Clancy, come Yancy, come Conners and Watson, up Miller, up Shiller, up Baker and Dotson!"  We tumbled outside in a swirl of confusion, so cold that each man could have used a transfusion.  "Get up on that hilltop and silence that Red. And don't you come back till your sure that he's dead."  Then putting his thumb in front of his nose Sgt. Kelly took leave of us Joes.  But we all heard him say in a voice soft and light, "Merry Christmas to all, may you live through the night."

(The author is unknown to me.  This poem paraphrases a well-known English language Christmas poem.)