The Christmas Truce
by David G. Stratman*
On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first
year of World War I, German, British, and French soldiers disobeyed
their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along
two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held Christmas
trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas.""You
no shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed across
a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas
carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared
rations, played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced
men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They
agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire
their weapons, and to aim high.
A shudder ran through the high command
on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring
their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals
on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous
and subject to court martial. By March, 1915 the fraternization
movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back
in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen
million would be slaughtered. Not many people have heard the story
of the Christmas Truce. Military leaders have not gone out of
their way to publicize it. On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in
the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played "Christmas
in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce, several
times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most
requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM
stations. "Even more startling than the number of requests
I get is the reaction to the ballad afterward by callers who hadn't
heard it before," said the radiohost. "They telephone
me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, `What the hell did
I just hear?'"
I think I know why the callers were in tears.
The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been
taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we
wish it could be and says, "This really happened once."
It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range
of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean
human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really
are true: the world really could be different.
*Excerpted from David G. Stratman, We CAN Change
the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life (New Democracy Books,
1991)
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