"One Hundred years ago the Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous cease fire and day of Christian Brotherhood for both sides of the No Man’s Land along the Western Front.
The event was kept secret by senior military officers and government censors as an embarrassing breakdown in military discipline.
Military recruiters from both the Triple Entente and the Central Powers promised recruits that they would be “Home for Christmas.”But after five months of war, the Western Front became an entrenched battlefield running almost 600 miles from Belgium Switzerland.
Most of the soldiers were young men from rural villages that had never been away from home.
They were cold, miserable and disillusioned in their three rows of trenches on Christmas Eve of 1914.
All the hype about God and Country were interrupted by the reality of rats, lice and endless artillery duels."
No comments:
Post a Comment