This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.

And you're listening to our Christmas Eve special.

All show long, we're sharing stories about what makes this time, well, the most wonderful time of the year.

Kristen Inbody was a reporter for Montana's Great Falls Tribune when she stumbled across the story

of a local rancher named Keith Ginther. Keith had joined the army in 1942, shipped out to Europe, and was captured during the infamous

Battle of the Bulge.

Here's Kristen's story originally entitled, P-O-W recalls, Silent Night.

I knew Keith Ginther liked gladiolas.

He grew them by the hundreds, And he was a bachelor farmer.

And he was quiet.

And that's all I knew about him, although I'd known him all my life.

One year around Christmas time, out of nowhere, he just started telling me the story.

I wrote it up, and he carried it in his walker for years.

He died in 2014.

And I think he was surprised, after being quiet for so long,

what came out, but he was proud, too.

Silent night, holy night. When the United Methodist congregation sings Silent Night by candlelight on Christmas Eve,

perhaps it will mean the most to the former

POW among them. Though he loves the most famous of carols, Keith Ginther 90 dreads Christmas.

He joked that it's because he has to wear a dress shirt and tie, but it's really the memories that

...