God Changes a Marine’s Heart with a Smile on Christmas
It was December 24, 1944. Christmas that year was a tough time for our country, especially for one young Marine sitting stiffly in an overcrowded train. This was day two of four days and four nights that Corporal Edward Andrusko would spend traveling by train from San Diego to New York. Each passenger car was packed with sailors, soldiers, and Marines trying to get home for Christmas.
Already they had traveled through bleak deserts, a blizzard in Denver, and what seemed like endless frozen prairies and farmland. The whole trip inched by under unrelenting gray clouds, but time didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter. Recovering from his third wound received in battle, and with a painful cause of malaria, Corporal Andrusko would arrive home in New York the day after Christmas. Even that seemed fitting.
“I would miss Christmas at home by a day,” he wrote afterward. “My parents had split up, and I had no home to go to. My girlfriend of four years sent me a Dear John letter, saying she had waited too long for me to return and found someone else. And worst of all, when I was well enough for duty, I could be sent overseas to battle again.”
Darkness had fallen and the rain had stopped at a small, dimly lit railroad station about two hours outside Chicago. Large snowdrifts blocked any view from the train. In that cold, dark tunnel of a station, peace and light and love – even thoughts of a loving God – seemed nonexistent. Earlier in the evening, Andrusko had spoken with a fellow Marine nicknamed “Ski” who was returning home, minus his right arm. He remembers, “Ski and I agreed that we had both became near atheists and cynics after three years of war.”
For one Marine at least, all that would change with a smile.
“It came upon a midnight clear…”
Few men were awake as they sat at the station, but Andrusko’s latest war wound and the malaria his body fought made sleep a challenge – particularly having to sleep sitting up the entire trip. At that darkest moment in his young life, the door at the other end of the train car opened.
From Andrusko’s seat far in the back, he could barely see a small boy and an elderly lady enter the car. He lost sight of them altogether as they walked slowly down the isle. Apparently they were looking for a seat. Andrusko closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but a noise near him caused him to open his eyes.
Standing right in front of him was the young boy and the elderly lady.
“Welcome home and Merry Christmas, Marine.” The young boy smiled as he extended his little hand. “My grandmother and I would like to give you a gift and thank you for serving our country.” The little boy shook the wounded Marine’s hand and handed him a crumpled one dollar bill. His grandmother put her arm around him and said, “God bless you.” And then they both smiled and said, “Merry Christmas, and goodbye.”
Andrusko asked them to wait and tried to grab his sea bag from under the seat to try to find a candy bar or some kind of gift he could give them, but when he looked up, they were gone – so quickly that he wondered if what had just happened was real or a dream. Later, he asked his friend Ski and two soldiers nearby if they’d seen the young boy and his grandmother come onto the train. No one had. They told him he was dreaming. Yet there in his had was the crumpled one dollar bill.
With that smile and small gift, “I contently fell asleep with my precious gift tucked safely in my pocket,” he recounted, “and a pleasant feeling in my heart, the nicest feeling I had had in a very long time.”
Corporal Andrusko credits that night with changing his bitter feelings after the war. But in his mind, it took another child, many years later, to explain to him why that was true.
More then 50 years passed, and the Marine on the train was now as old as the grandmother he’d met that night. It was Christmastime again, and Corporal Andrusko was surrounded by his family gathered for a Christmas celebration, not a train full of weary soldiers. During a lull in the activity, he recounted to everyone the story of the little boy on the train. He hadn’t shared the story before. It was the reminiscing of a soldier grown old who had struggled a long time with an unanswered question. As he finished, Andrusko asked , really to no one in particular.
“Who was that little boy on the train, and why did he and his grandmother choose me? Why me?”
A young niece was visiting, and she had listened to her uncle’s wartime story and his unanswered questions.
“I know,” she said quietly.
Everyone stopped and looked at her.
The old Marine said, “You know what?”
“I know who the little boy on the train was, and why he picked you.” She paused, very deliberately, and then said,
“The little boy was God, and He chose you because you were very, very sad and disappointed with everyone and everything. He wanted to make you happy again and welcome you home – and He did."
Leave it to a young child to make sense of things – and to The Child named Jesus – to light up our lives and hearts during this challenging Christmas as well.
Merry Christmas from StrongFamilies.com!
Origin of this story and how you can find the book, The Light of Home:
I wrote this story for my book, “The Light of Home, by John Trent, paintings by Thomas Kinkade, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR, 2002, Chapter Eight: Remembering to Smile, pgs 92-96. I adapted it from Michael Shol and Tom Spain, eds., “Miracle on a Train,” in I’ll Be Home for Christmas: The Library of Congress Revisits the Spirit of Christmas During World War II (New York: Delacorte Press, 1999), pp. 127-210. “Miracle on a Train” was originally published as: Edward Andrusko, “Welcome Home and Merry Christmas,” in Navy Times, March 19, 1997. Used in my book by permission.
"The Light of Home" and other great Christmas gifts can be ordered online at the StrongFamilies Bookstore
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