![]() soil was, “the best Christmas present a man could have.”Ĭivilians near the West Coast “separation centers,” where soldiers and sailors were being relieved from active duty, enthusiastically opened their homes to the new and soon-to-be veterans, while many of the 50,000 men and women awaiting discharge from points along the Eastern Seaboard were required to have Christmas dinner at the separation center itself, or sometimes even on the ships which had just brought them there. Upon being asked by a newspaper reporter what he thought about being among the 150,000 who were stranded along the West Coast for Christmas, an Army Private trying to get home to Texas responded that simply stepping on U.S. The predicament was met with overwhelming understanding and good nature among the servicemen. The rule of thumb in the days immediately preceding Christmas 1945 was that a westbound train would be about 6 hours late, and an eastbound train about 12 hours. Instead, they faced the worst air, rail and automobile traffic jams in history. And so throngs of American military personnel-some 250,000 in all, some with brand new discharge papers and some just a day or two away from separation-found themselves back on American soil for Christmas 1945, but not quite home. But violent storms at sea and the volume of eligible servicemen conspired to thwart the high ambitions of these operations. ![]() And so it was without too much preparation that Operation Magic Carpet began in September 1945 to bring the troops back home to the United States.Īs Christmas approached, the Army and Navy launched Operation Santa Claus to expedite Operation Magic Carpet, with the goal of rushing as many eligible men and women home for the holiday as possible. With all resources dedicated to winning the war, neither the Army nor the Navy had spent much time thinking through the logistics of bringing everyone home until after the fighting was finished. But the war’s end hardly meant that the 2,000,000 men and women eligible for separation-those who could be done with active duty-were home in their civvies by the time the holiday rolled around. That year, as war drew to a close in both Europe and the Pacific, it seemed possible that the wish might come true. The peril and sacrifice of war was hard to reconcile with memories of the joyfulness of pre-War holidays, and by 1944 many American servicemen and women shared one particular Christmas wish: to be “Home Alive by ’45.” Pilots were warned that if they were forced to land in enemy territory, the passengers, and perhaps the crew, risked being executed.Christmas in America had been anxious and somber during the four years of World War II. ![]() Though the evacuation was kept secret for fear of sabotage, the planes were routinely fired on by Egyptian forces. “The flight from Yemen to Israel, a journey of more than 1,400 miles, was almost entirely over hostile territory. To see a video about Operation Magic Carpet, look below. ![]() In general, however, the mission has been valorized as an heroic fulfillment of Israel’s commitment protecting Jews worldwide, and has been commemorated through street-naming, postage stamps, and by other means. Critics have described the airlift as mishandled and incompetently run, resulting in a high level of infant mortality, and also note that the religious authorities of Yemen greatly enriched themselves through confiscation of Jewish property. This was the first mass aliyah from a Muslim country, and presaged the arrival of more than 700,000 Jews who came to Israel during the nation’s first years. The secret and complex airlift involved 380 flights using British and American planes flying from Aden, the capital of Yemen, which many of the emigrés reached through dangerous journeys several hundred ended up buried in Aden. Israel’s Operation Magic Carpet (the nickname for Operation on Wings of Eagles), which brought some 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel, concluded with its final two flights on this date in 1950.
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