It was exactly 100 years ago when the Christmas Truce of 1914 occurred, when Christian soldiers on both sides of the infamous No Man’s Land of the Western Front, recognized their common humanity, dropped their guns and fraternized with the so-called enemies that they had been ordered to kill without mercy the day before.
The truth of that remarkable event was effectively covered up by state and military authorities (and the embedded journalists at the time) because the authorities were angered (and embarrassed) by the breakdown of military discipline.
In the annals of war, such ‘mutinies’ are now unheard of. The generals and (as well as the saber-rattling, chest-thumping politicians and war profiteers back home) rapidly developed strategies to prevent such behavior from happening again.
Christmas Eve of 1914 was only five months into World War I, and the cold, weary, homesick soldiers found themselves not heroes, as expected, but rather miserable, frightened and disillusioned wretches living in rat- and louse-infested trenches.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on December 24, 2014.
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