Guest Post by Jesse
Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard Germans troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches.
The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man’s land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts. After Boxing Day, meetings in no man’s land dwindled out.
The truce was not observed everywhere along the Western Front. Elsewhere the fighting continued and casualties did occur on Christmas Day. Some officers were unhappy at the truce and worried that it would undermine fighting spirit.
After 1914, the High Commands on both sides tried to prevent any truces on a similar scale happening again. Despite this, there were some isolated incidents of soldiers holding brief truces later in the war, and not only at Christmas.
British Imperial War Museum, The Real Story of the Christmas Truce
And that was two 4th Turnings ago! They just keep marching along – all different (which is why I so fear the current valley we are entering) and we never learn from the past.
So we are doomed to repeat it, hoping only that we are born at the end of a 4th Turning (a Silent – like me) to enjoy peak prosperity before running into the next 4th Turning the depression and war (now in progress and getting worse)I’d love to be a fly on the wall and watch it unfold but I don’t want to live through the pain.
This story just shows you that somehow, even in the depths of the war at the end of the 4th Turning in the WWI, human nature basically has good people here and there and TPTB won’t allow any of it if they help it!
MA
Jesse,
Well done.
You cracked my tough guy facade…. few have managed to do that.
It’s the shitbirds in control who do this shit… and us grunts pay for it. Dudes should have been partying and exchanging gifts… not blowing each others heads off…
Assholes…
Every fuckstick who starts a war should have to go fight on the front lines…. along with their sons. And not as officers. Front line infantry, motherfucker. You started it, so put your ass and the asses of your sons on the line with the rest of us and risk it all…
At least when it comes to war amongst us Achromatics… everyone else can go to hell..
Billy,
Amen.