World War II veteran Paul F. Dudley was stationed in Vietnam during the holidays in 1971 when he wrote the words to his poem "Christmas Eve" as a letter home to his family. Later, in 1993, he set the poem to music and it was recorded by Dolly Coulter on a CD arranged and produced by Four Seasons founder Tommy DeVito.
Read more about Dudley's book in Literary Las Vegas.
To listen to Dudley's poem set to music, listen below.
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" data="https://www.reviewjournal.com/media/audio/mp3small.swf" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="135" height="30" id="mp3small" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="movie" value="https://www.reviewjournal.com/media/audio/mp3small.swf" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="MFILE=https://www.reviewjournal.com/media/audio/christmas_eve.mp3&MSTART=no" /> <embed src="mp3small.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="135" height="30" name="mp3small" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object>
— Ginger Meurer