WWI Christmas Truce, Christmas Eve, 1914

The photo below shows the type of place that thousands of soldiers called home for 4 years, in the early 1900s, from 1914-1918. 

This is how the sides viewed each other until that evening in December of 1914. Each side trying it's best to kill as many on the other side as possible. During war, it makes it easier to kill them, if you can make the enemy less than human. Many find it also helps if you learn to hate them. Those types of conditions make what happened next even more amazing. 

Invariably, even during war. on a holiday like Christmas, people will still want to celebrate to holiday  and do what they did "back home". Singing is an important part of of Christmas celebrations, just about anywhere in the world the holiday is celebrated. 

Who started to sing first, can not be known for sure, but singing began in both trenches. I can imagine that it would be pretty hard for a person to shoot another person while they were singing a Christmas Carol. 

It is important to note that many times, the trenches were so close together, that you could actually talk to your enemy. This made it possible to hear what they were singing, and I'm sure that sometimes both sides must have sang together. Then at some point, they began to shout at each other, and feelings of hate somehow began to give way to recognition that they had so much in common. The same religion, love of family, love of nation, and love of their fellow soldiers. 

Along the Western Front, there wasn't a truce everywhere, and in some cases, it was more of an agreement to not shoot at each other for a short time, while each side gathered their dead. The area between the the trenches was called no man's land, and if you got shot out there, you could lay there from a long time, whether you were dead or not.   

It takes enormous courage to fight in a war, and face death on a daily basis. I could help but think about the first person who had the courage to stand up, and trust "the enemy" with their life. Somebody had to be first. And what a moment that must have been, when that first soldier stood up, and nobody fired. Then he began to walk toward the enemy's trench. Then another stood up. Then some from both sides began to stand and walk into no man's land. What a huge leap of faith it was, and by taking it, a war stopped. It didn't stop for long, and once it began again, it would rage for another four years, but on that Christmas Eve, in 1914, it stopped for two days.

Ordinary men decided not to fight. A few exchanged gifts, they told stories, they showed photos of their families, and for a short time, there was no killing in some places along the trenches. They also took the time to respectfully recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. 

There were other attempt at truces, but none of them were as successful as the one in 1914.