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Merry Christmas from the trenches
The night the world stood still has lessons for us all
On December 24th, 1914, German troops in France received gifts from home, including Christmas trees shipped with millions of ornamental candles by Kaiser Wilhelm.
These poor boys — and many of them were, literally, boys — were spending Christmas away from home. For most, it was likely the first time they had ever done so. On the holiest of Christian holidays, instead of being safe in warm beds, filled with good food and surrounded by love — they were in hell.
The trenches they lived in were water logged, rat and corpse infested and increasingly frozen. Some men died of things like gangrene and frostbite.
The artillery barrages went on through the night, making it impossible to sleep. Sometimes a trench would get hit and men would die.
These men were defenseless against cannons and artillery, machine guns and poison gas. Yet senior officers like Sir Douglas Haig repeatedly sent them to charge across No Man’s Land against machine gun nests. There, soldiers would be mowed down. The lucky ones would go quickly.
Some were not so blessed. They would scream in pain as they lay dying, some helplessly hanging from barbed wire or lying in craters. Their brethren would hear their…
