Christmas Truce 1914

[u4ic]

Can you imagine the Americans and the insurgents putting aside their differences tomorrow for a game of football?

Stories tell of the British and German soldiers playing football together in No Man's Land on Christmas day - but is this just a legend? Historian Malcolm Brown separates fact from fantasy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/197627.stm

[Kindigger]

1. Is that the same war....

...where they stopped fighting for the night, and each side could hear Christmas carols coming out of the other side's foxholes?

[soup]

3. Yes.

I watched part of the program on the History Channel this morning that Greylyn58 mentions below.

Humanity in the midst of the machine of war.

The program touched on how difficult it was to get them to start shooting at each other again.

It was heartbreaking when they went back to killing each other again.


Good article in the Guardian about it:

Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow

The First World War's horrors still move us but one man recalls his moment of peace amid the bloodshed

Lorna Martin, Scotland editor
Sunday December 19, 2004
The Observer

The words drifted across the frozen battlefield: 'Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles Schlaft, einsam wacht'. To the ears of the British troops peering over their trench, the lyrics may have been unfamiliar but the haunting tune was unmistakable. After the last note a lone German infantryman appeared holding a small tree glowing with light. 'Merry Christmas. We not shoot, you not shoot.'

It was just after dawn on a bitingly cold Christmas Day in 1914, 90 years ago on Saturday, and one of the most extraordinary incidents of the Great War was about to unfold.

Weary men climbed hesitantly at first out of trenches and stumbled into no man's land. They shook hands, sang carols, lit each other's cigarettes, swapped tunic buttons and addresses and, most famously, played football, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets as goalposts. The unauthorised Christmas truce spread across much of the 500-mile Western Front where more than a million men were encamped.

According to records held by the World War One Veterans' Association, there is only one man in the world still alive who spent 25 December 1914 serving in a conflict that left 31 million people dead, wounded or missing.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1376965,00.html

[Greylyn58]

2. The History Channel

covered that very subject today during an hour long special. It was very interesting and they had some of the adult children of men from both side talking about how their fathers felt.

It was very touching.

[orpupilofnature57]

4. Power of belief in the same god.Not the case in Iraq, insurgents prove it.

There is no common ground,the people of Iraq have adopted the same policy as Crazy Horse,Kill them all.