Courtesy of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

Gen. Sidney Berry offered a Christmas update to his wife from Vietnam in 1966.

Across three pages — typed on Christmas Eve 1966 from a village in South Vietnam — the soldier’s words to his wife dance seamlessly from a description of singing carols in the jungle to his latest enemy kills to, finally, a vow of eternal affection. 

“Last night we had a candle-lighting ceremony ... Gasoline drums welded together end to end with a white Noel on the side. Electric light on top covered by red cellophane ... Reindeer and Santa Claus at front. It was raining,” Army Gen. Sidney B. Berry wrote to his wife. He next reveals how he recently had perched in a helicopter door, firing his rifle at men below: “We all were shooting. And we killed several ...”

“Lovely Anne, I love thee,” Berry closed. “Perhaps the best aspect of this whole period of separation is our increased appreciation and understanding of each other. I love thee, and I will devote the rest of my life to making love to thee.” He signs off: “Thy wearied professional, Sid.”

This time of year, communication from combat lines has long provided a poignant piece of Christmas.

Today's troops, for the most part, send their holiday wishes via email or Skype video chat sessions. But life was much different before technology began shadowing  service men and women so far from home.

At the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pa., thousands of notes, authored by service members from conflicts past, are painstakingly stored in acid-free folders, tucked inside protective boxes, and categorized by family, forming numerous narrow rows flanked by shelves 10 feet high. Many of the correspondences, once jammed in attic boxes, have been donated to the archive. Museum directors retrieved several dozen Christmas missives for NBC News to review.

From the Civil War to the Vietnam War, troops ranging from privates to a general struck the same literary chords — no matter the success of their conflict, their era, or the location of their last battle. They often chronicle violence during a moment meant to celebrate peace. They typically express humor, perhaps to put families at ease. And they reveal yearnings to be back with gathered families and friends.

“A lot of people wrote letters to their mothers at Christmas. I guess it’s a time you really start to think about home, really start to think about where you come from,” said Conrad Crane, chief of historical services at the Army Heritage and Education Center.

Some of the letters offered to NBC News were were originally mailed to nieces, parents and wives. 

Courtesy of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

John T. Cheney, an officer in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, wrote to his wife from Mississippi in 1862.

On Dec. 28, 1862, five months before the U.S. Army’s siege of Vicksburg, 1st Illinois Light Artillery Capt. John T. Cheney sat at a humid encampment, he wrote, near the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi and scribbled some lines to “My Dear Wife.” Her name was Mary. He also had two children at home at the time, including an 11-year-old son, military archives show. On now-yellowed paper in cursive style, Cheney mentioned to Mary that he was, “waiting to retreat” — revealing, however, he believed his unit “ought not to be compelled to do so.” He told her that he and his men were living off of half bread rations and three-quarter meat rations but he reassured her that he was “not yet out of medicine.” And he acknowledged that on Dec. 24 he had procured three gallons of whiskey for his men: “We had a very pleasant Christmas Eve.”

“I am quite well and could I only know that you were well at home I would be thankful,” Cheney wrote. Less than two years later, he would accompany Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous march on Atlanta. “I wish I could step in and stop with you all tonight ... Give my love to all of the friends and kiss the little ones for me a time or two ... Good night.”

Courtesy of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

While training to head to combat in World War I, Adam F. Glatfelter offered some soothing words to a niece.

Not surprisingly, the intended audience of each letter, Crane said, generally shaped the tone of words from the front. The museum has “steamy” notes from husbands to wives, he said, and fatherly notes to children. 

On Dec. 26, 1917, Adam F. Glatfelter penned some thoughts to his niece, Carrie, from Camp Gordon in Atlanta. The training center was built to prepare men to head to the trenches of Europe to fight during World War I. In cursive hand, using a pencil, he told her of spending Christmas Day playing music with his military orchestra for the local bishop. He joked that his ensemble was quickly becoming “pretty popular” with folks in Atlanta. He listed his holiday meal: two turkey dinners. And he thanked her for sending a spool of thread.

“Do not worry about me,” he wrote, signing as “Uncle Frank.”

Holiday menus — and pleas not to fret — color many Christmas letters home. On Dec. 25, 1944, Navy Pfc. Clark S. Crane dashed off a one-page note to his parents in a V-mail, short for “Victory Mail.” The system offered troops templates bordered by red ink. Their words would be censored by the military — a stamp in one corner validated the content had been approved — then copied to film and printed back to paper before being placed in the U.S. mail.

Courtesy of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

A V-Mail from Navy sailor Clark Crane, sent at Christmas 1944 to his parents.

Crane was anchored near the Philippines at the time, according to the Army Heritage and Education Center, although his letter notes he was “Somewhere at Sea.” He tells his parents how he had “just finished extending season’s greetings ... good natured but well felt” to other men on board via a Christmas poem that he authored with another sailor. He offered one line for his folks. 

“‘Shed a tear in your Christmas beer since there ain’t gonna be no egg in it this year.’ Pretty corny, eh?” Crane wrote, noting that was his third Christmas spent at war and away from his parents’ house at 285. N. Maple Ave. in Kingston, Pa.

“Lined up ... for Christmas dinner with tender turkey and cranberries on the menu,” he wrote. “All of it was very good but there was a deficit of brown skin and the savory smell of a Christmas turkey at good old 285 North Maple. Lots of Love, Clark.”

Another poem — albeit a modern, bloody take on the classic “A Visit from St. Nicholas” — formed a Christmas letter home from Douglas G. Anderson, then stationed in Korea. Neatly hand-written on green paper, the note contained no date or location. Records show he was an Army sergeant who would have been about 23 at the time.

Courtesy of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center

A Christmas poem - about a battle - penned by Douglas G. Anderson from Korea.

“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the tent was the odor of fuel oil. The stovepipe was bent. The shoe pacs were hung by the oil stove with care in hope that they’d issue each man a new pair. The weary GIs were sacked out in their beds. Visions of sugar babes danced through their heads,” Anderson wrote.

“When up on the ridge-line there arose such a clatter, a Chinese machine gun had started to chatter. I rushed to my rifle and threw back the bolt, the rest of my tent mates arose with a jolt.” Staying in rhyme, Anderson described the orders shouted by his platoon sergeant, Kelly.   " 'Get up on that on hilltop and silence that red and don’t you come back till you’re sure that he’s dead.' Then putting his thumb in front of his nose, Sergeant Kelly took leave of us shivering Joes. But we all heard him say in a voice soft and light ‘Merry Christmas to all, may you live through the night."

After the birth of the Internet and as modern service members waged war in Iraq during two conflicts and, now, in Afghanistan, the art of the Christmas letter home has largely been replaced by Skype sessions, said Col. Matt Dawson, director Army Heritage and Education Center.

In historic missives from combat zones, “people bared their souls,” Dawson said. Some of the authors couldn’t be sure that those words wouldn’t be the last their families would receive from them.

Today, such intimate moments are shared during one-one-one cyber chats that rarely, if ever, are saved — unless the troops use a new service called TroopTree.com in which they can record, upload and send personal video messages for family or friends, and do so at no cost.

In most cases, however, sweet sentiments shared during Skype sessions from war zones are simply here and gone.

“So in 20, 30 or 40 years," Dawson said, "when we’re looking for this kind of stuff from the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will be more difficult to find," — unless a service member takes time to mail a post card home, as Marine Sgt. Brian Snell did this month. He sent the card to his wife Liz and their two daughters. The front shows a red Christmas ornament stamped with an “Operation Enduring Freedom” logo, atop an American flag.

"Hey love, Hope you girls have a Merry Christmas and New Year. I miss you all,” Snell, 30, wrote to his family, who live in the San Diego area. This is his first deployment. He was sent to Afghanistan in autumn.

“There is something about being able to read his handwriting to make the world feel a little smaller, like he isn't on the other side of it,” Liz Snell said. “Unlike a phone call, a letter lingers. You can have a bad day, pick up the card, and he is here.”

More content from NBCNews.com:

• After firing soldier in 2000, USPS ordered to rehire him — and pay him $2 million
• Same-sex wife of Army officer banned from joining military spouses club
• Military cracks down on alcohol abuse amid age-old bingeing habit 
• Fewer homeless vets this year, but advocacy group sees 'alarming' trend
• Disability-compensation claims for veterans lag as 'VA backlog' worsens
• Florida guide uses hunting as rustic therapy for combat veterans

Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

AP Photo/Library of Congress

Dr. Charles A. Leale was the first doctor to treat President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot at a Washington theater on the night of April 14, 1865. Helena Iles Papaioannou, a researcher with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project has discovered an original copy of Dr. Leale's clinical 21-page report from the night Lincoln was shot.

Researchers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library are marveling over the historical equivalent of buried treasure: an up-to-now undiscovered account of the night Lincoln was assassinated, written by the first doctor to treat him.

Dr. Charles Leale was a 23-year-old army surgeon who was in attendance at Ford's Theatre when John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln days after the conclusion of the Civil War. 

Abraham Lincoln researcher Helena Iles Papaioannou discovered Leale's account while searching the records of the surgeon general in the National Archives in Washington, DC. The 21-page report is Leale's own retelling of the tragedy, written just hours after the president died the following morning.

Read the original report on NBCChicago.com

"What is remarkable about this newly discovered report is it's immediacy and poignancy," said Daniel Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project. "You can sense the helplessness Leale and the other doctors felt that night, but it does not have the sentimentality or added layers of later accounts."

The young doctor was sitting just 25 feet away from the Lincoln box, giving him a front-row seat to the tragedy. He then became the first doctor to treat Lincoln, supervising his care until the president's own doctor arrived.

"The theatre was well filled, and the play 'Our American Cousin' progressed very pleasantly until about half past ten," Leale wrote, "when the report of a pistol was distinctly heard."

"About a minute after, a man of low stature with black hair and eyes was seen leaping to the stage beneath, holding in his hand a drawn dagger."

Leale described how Booth had become entangled in the flag draping the front of Lincoln's box in his leap to the stage. Booth broke his leg in the fall.

"I then heard cries that the 'President has been murdered,' Leale wrote, adding that calls of "kill the murderer" and "shoot him" began echoing through the theatre.

AP Photo/Alexander Gardner

Dr. Charles Leale rushed to the upstairs balcony where Abraham Lincoln had been seated after hearing the president had been shot. He was the first to administer aid
immediately following the shooting.

"I immediately ran to the President's box and as soon as the door was opened was admitted and introduced to Mrs. Lincoln, when she exclaimed several times, 'O doctor, do what you can for him, do what you can!'"

Leale said that Lincoln's breathing was "intermittent" and that he could find no pulse. Using a finger, he removed a clot of blood from the bullet wound and said Lincoln's breathing became "more regular."

The doctor described in great detail how he and others carried Lincoln from the box, down the stairs of the theatre and across the street to the Peterson house across the street.

"We placed the President in bed in a diagonal position, as the bed was too short.  As soon as we placed him in bed we removed his clothes and covered him with blankets. While covering him I found his lower extremities very cold from his feet to a distance of several inches of above his knees. I then sent for bottles of hot water, and hot blankets, which were applied to his lower extremities and abdomen."

Leale said Mary Todd Lincoln entered the room "three or four times" during the evening and that the president's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, remained at his bedside throughout the night. Unmentioned in the report, but well known to history, is the fact that the First Lady was eventually expelled and kept from the room, her grief was so intense.

After hours of futile efforts to save the fallen president, Leale described Lincoln's final moments.

"At 7:20 a.m. he breathed his last, and 'the spirit fled to God who gave it.'"

Leale had received his medical license only six weeks earlier. At the time of the assassination, he was in charge of a wounded officers' ward at the United States Army hospital in Armory Square in Washington. He had been present on the lawn at the White House a few evenings earlier, when Lincoln delivered what would become his final speech to a crowd celebrating the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.  Booth was present on the lawn that night as well, and many historians believe he solidified his decision to kill the President that evening.

Researchers at the Lincoln Library say that in the ensuing years, Leale rarely discussed his role in the drama. Indeed, it was not until 1909, 44 years after the assassination, that he spoke publicly about the events at Ford's Theatre.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• 11 famed US sites named to annual 'most endangered places' list
• Video: Florida graduation takes explosive turn
• Prosecutors have 'bizarre' letters Sandusky wrote to victim, source tells NBC
• Coroner: Two teens killed on tracks were playing 'Ghost Train' game
• US appeals court won't revisit California's Prop 8

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Courtesy of Petersburg National Battlefield

Buckets of Civil War bullets seized by the government after a search at John J. Santo's home. Scientific archeological data is lost forever because the exact location of the finds was not recorded.

Follow @msnbc_us

A Virginia man convicted of taking more than 9,000 artifacts from a Civil War battlefield was engaged in "heartbreaking" destruction of American history, experts say.

John Jeffrey Santo, 52, has been sentenced to 366 days in prison and must also pay $7,346 restitution to the Petersburg National Battlefield for damage caused by his excavations, according to the decision handed down Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer.

Santo, who is unemployed and a native of Pennsylvania, used a metal detector and sometimes his dog to look for Civil War-era artifacts that he could collect and sell.

Relic hunting is like ripping a page from a book, Randy Jones, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, told msnbc.com. Part of an an artifact's true value comes from the context it is discovered in, he explained.

"It happens more than we know about," James Blankenship, a historian at the Petersburg National Battlefield, told msnbc.com. "The biggest loss is the loss of historic information."

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, investigators recovered more than 9,000 relics, including bullets, buckles, cannonballs, breastplates and buttons when they caught up with Santo last year. Authorities also found a handwritten journal the man kept of his illegal excavation trips, which happened regularly between 2006 and 2010.

Courtesy of Petersburg National Battlefield

Union Army soldier's belt buckle. Unauthorized excavation may have disturbed a soldier's grave.

"The defendant's journal is a tell-all of his misconduct, identifying with a high degree of specification where he engaged in metal detecting/relic hunting and when and what he recovered," Assistant U.S. Attorney N. George Metcalf wrote in federal court papers.

"He even kept a running tally of the items he found from day to day on a yearly basis."

Blankenship said in one instance Santo wrote about discovering five buttons in one place, which suggests that a previously undiscovered body of a soldier had been buried there.

Santo pleaded guilty in December to two counts of damaging archaeological resources and one count of pillaging Petersburg National Battlefield. He is regarded as the park's most prolific relic thief.

"It's just heartbreaking," Julia Steele, an archaeologist and the battlefield's cultural resource manager told msnbc.com. Steele said Santo systematically pillaged several sites to the point that the scene made her physically ill.

With TV shows such as the recently launched "American Digger," Steele said pop culture tends to glorify relic hunting. Many people see it as a "treasure hunt," she said.

Library Of Congress / Library of Congress

Petersburg Battlefield, April 1865.

Santo's attorney described him in court papers as a recovering alcoholic afflicted with an anxiety disorder that prevents him from working or socializing with people. Santo lived with his girlfriend in a house about two miles from the battlefield park.

"His anxiety prevents him from going into stores and restaurants and prevents him from working, unless it is a job he can do with a friend," court papers read. "As a result of his disorder, he rarely leaves his home, and prior to his arrest in this matter, his walks and metal detecting in the National Battlefield with his dog was his only outlet."

Santo's attorney said her client never sold anything he recovered, according to court papers, but prosecutors said Santo must have found a way to make money from his exploits. Subpoenas of online auction houses and local retailers did not uncover any evidence, The Progress-Index reported.

Blankenship said relic hunters are secretive and their transactions rarely leave a paper trail. "This guy was in it for profit," he said.

Hidden cameras captured Santo in the act, and Blankenship hopes more will be installed throughout the park. He said law enforcement officers sometimes organize stakeouts, but relic hunters tend to hide in the harder to monitor wooden areas. Blankenship says Santo's acts were "thievery and robbery" and hopes his sentence sends a strong message to other relic hunters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Red Tape: Credit bureaus upsell ID theft victims
• 'Hell no, we won't glow,' nuclear protesters chant
• Trayvon Martin's death: Young, black and wearing a hoodie
• Cat plunges 19 stories from high-rise, and walks away

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook