Here's the thing.You kill what you hate.
You hate what you fear.
You fear what you don't understand.
It's a little harder to kill somebody when you've sung songs together, exchanged meager gifts, looked at pictures of each others families, maybe played a game of football.
That's what happened on Christmas Eve, 1914.
A spontaneous cease-fire between the men in the opposing trenches.
May have spread to involve a million troops on both sides.
Some places it lasted a day or two.
Some places it lasted until New Year's Day.
There are differing accounts.
The official story is that the lads got over their brief sentimentality, came to their senses, and went back to the regularly-scheduled slaughter as ordered.
The un-official story is that men continued to refuse to fight each other and that there were reprisals from the brass against those who so refused. Units had to be broken up, men transferred and so on.
Who do you believe?
In this case I will believe in what I would prefer to be true.
It's my Christmas gift to me.
How about you?
Peace,
sj
Forget the Grinch.
Forget that Wonderful Life
Here's your Christmas Movie:
Joyeux Noël French film about the Christmas Truce.
1 comment:
Ah. One of my all-time favorite American Civil War stories, and Christmas stories, and stories in general.
A line from a song in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (of all the crazy things) has stuck with me for years: We don't like what we don't understand because it scares us.
Yep.
T
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