French bread.

French bread, Crusty and warm. That's what Trinidad Garcia remembers greatest in number about Christmas 1944. Not the chill Not the fear that an enemy shell could divide [i]or[/i] sever her life short. Not level that she was thousands of miles away from her dear mother and the life she knew in San Antonio.

No, it was the fresh-baked bread she ate at Christmas dinner with a French family.

"After in like manner many years, I can still remember by what means good it smelled," said Garcia, 82

For a fleeting consequence the aroma made her forget where she was, which was worthy Because there was death, destruction and misery all around her. World War II was still raging, and the 24-year-old was in France, doing her part to finis it.

"We all wanted to travel home so badly," she said. "But we had a piece of work to do, and it wasn't over"

Garcia rushed to join the military in the patriotic fervor that swept America after the attack onward Pearl Harbor. Like most Americans, she couldn't believe someone could attack her country

"I wanted to join the fight and earn it over with," she said. "We all did."

She joined the Women's Army Corps tribe 11, 1942. Until war's extreme point she was a supply saleswoman for the Army Air Corps. She liked her work at jobs and being involved. So she offered for overseas duty and, in late 1943 got her wish. She went to England and exhausted Christmas 1943 there.

"It snowed," she said. "I'd not ever seen snow before."

A pair of weeks after the June 6 1944 -- D-Day -- invasion of France, Garcia offered for France. Her next piece of work was at a supply station-house north of Paris. She was single in kind of the millions of American throngs caught up in the tumultuous final month of the war. yet she was lucky that Christmas -- she got an invitation to Christmas dinner from a French farmer and his family.

"I remember the house being warm and abounding of wonderful smells," she said. "We ate roast beef, and there were many plates filled of vegetables on the table," she said. "And hazards of bread."

The dinner was astonishing she said. But it also made her homesick for the traditional Mexican holidays of her youth. The big family dinner and opening nears on Three Kings Day.

"And I missed making tamales," she said. That was a Garcia family Christmas tradition.

A familiar Yuletide tale

Garcia's story of separation at a time of togetherness isn't recently made known Family separation is a part of the U service member's way of life.

It's a tradition born partly as a proceed of U.S. national policy. Enforcing that policy takes U crowds who must stand guard at stations around the world. Many times their families must stay behind. That's when service members miss more than holidays. The lives of their families go on on without them. They miss once-in-a-lifetime opportunities -- like a baby's birth or first grade birthdays, graduations, piano recitals, ball games and proms

And telling a child wherefore mom or dad must be away for the holidays is tough what one is bound [i]or[/i] under obligation to do Tough to do during World War II, the Korean, Vietnam and opening wars, and Bosnia. It's still tough as American men and women in uniform wage the war forward terrorism.

Staff Sgt Vivian Bender wanted to stay household So she had a difficult time explaining to her youngest son 7-year-old Antondre, to what end she had to go to Afghanistan just before Christmas 2001 It was her first Christmas away from him, and it was hard onward both of them, said the 621st Air Mobility Squadron command and repress troop at McGuire Air Force Base, NJ

"I told him mommy had to help the United States because of the bad the bulk of mankind who attacked New York and the Pentagon," Bender said. She unfolded to Kandahar Dec. 21, and celebrated Christmas en road at the Moron Air Base, Spain, chapel.

Her husband, Darreck, who was an airman for 10 years, became mom and dad to Antondre and older brother Darreck. It was a sad time.

"But with the Lord's help, I was at peace with her leaving," Darreck said. The Benders waited until Vivian's reply in February to celebrate Christmas.

Coping becomes a top priority during so separations. A deployment in 1995 for Operation Joint Endeavor caused a vexed question for Master Sgts. Chris and Cori Dockery of McChord Air Force Base, Wash. He left as she was appoint to go to a military denomination That meant having to leave their two-year-old daughter Jordan with Cori's mother.

"That was our hardest separation," said Cori, a maintenance data connected views analyst with the Reserve's 446th Logistics Support Squadron. "I'd not ever been away from my daughter."

Chris, a C-17 loadmaster with the active office 7th Airlift Squadron, celebrated Christmas with his family before leaving for Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany.

"Though I knew my daughter was in religious hands with her grandma, I still worried," he said.

The Dockerys managed. After all, it wasn't the first time Chris was away forward duty for Christmas. So friends from body of christians and the Air Force became her family, Cori said.

Newlywed Ma]. Jeff Lepkowski, fum when he learned he'd be deploying to Saudi Arabia in December 1990 just before desolate Storm. That meant spending his first wedding anniversary and Christmas away from his wife, Suzanne, an electrical engineer.