Dr. Jerry Sanson
Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum
November 2025
Thanksgiving dinner, Italy, 1944. https://www.wwiimemorialfriends.org/blog/thanksgiving-1944
World War II affected virtually every aspect of life in the United States including holiday celebrations. Some holidays became occasions to promote the war effort as when characters wearing Mardi Gras dress roamed Canal Street in New Orleans selling war bonds in 1945. New Orleans Krewes cancelled Mardi Gras celebrations in 1942 for the duration of the war, but the celebration turned into a new way to support the war effort. Other holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day and April Fool’s Day featured similar activities.
Traditional American holidays such as Thanksgiving often became even more tinged with patriotism during the war. The celebration in 1944 was the third and last wartime Thanksgiving for the United States. Most states celebrated the holiday on 23 November (fourth Thursday) in accordance with a Congressional Resolution approved in 1941 while a few states celebrated on the traditional last Thursday (30 November).
The national mood was somber no matter which date a state chose to observe. Some Americans hoped that the war would end before the holiday and that their loved ones would be back home to join in the festivities. That hopeful thought was not to be the case. The country was in no mood for traditional football games. Macy’s department store shredded its balloons and donated the rubber to the war effort, The store canceled its traditional parade, and no revelers lined the streets of New York. Few people traveled to family homes because of wartime restrictions on gasoline and tires, and the Federal Government asked “Is YOUR trip necessary? Millions of troops are on the move” in order to discourage civilian travel by bus or train. The Planters Press newspaper in Bossier City, Louisiana, reported that even though turkey farmers produced a bumper crop of birds that year, the Army planned in June that every American soldier would eat turkey for Thanksgiving Day and began buying turkeys in July to meet that goal. Civilians were embargoed from buying turkeys until very near to Thanksgiving Day after the military filled its needs. Civilians also struggled with the same restrictions on cranberries.
A story from the heart of the battle of the Hurtgen Forest is perhaps the most poignant account of what happened to some of those turkeys. Lt. Paul Boesch received a field telephone call that his men would receive a hot traditional Thanksgiving meal in the midst of the second longest battle–only Bataan lasted longer–that the U.S. Army ever fought. Even though he wondered how that delivery could happen on a hill in the very heart of the battle, turkey, cranberry sauce, and a cigar arrived for each soldier, unfortunately just before a German barrage that killed or seriously wounded many of his men.
As the account concludes “The turkey went cold and prayers were for the dying, culled in yet another harvest of death,”
American soldiers and civilians had to reconcile themselves to other harvests of death before the war ended. The Battle of the Bulge, the struggle across Germany to Berlin, the passing of President Franklin Roosevelt, sea and island battles that led Allies almost to the coast of Japan still loomed ahead on that gloomy Thanksgiving Day.
President Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation 2629 on November 1, 1944, calling on the nation to give thanks for the victories the Allies had won so far that liberated millions of people from the tyranny of Naziism and promising a successful conclusion of the war. “It is fitting,” the president said, “that we give thanks with special fervor to our Heavenly Father for the mercies we have received individually and as a nation and for the blessings He has restored through the victories of our arms and those of our allies, to His children in other lands.”
The mess kit and K Ration box exhibited in the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum are reminders of the mundane meals that soldiers relied on for sustenance during World War II and the welcome alternatives provided by the Army for holiday meals when possible.