AUT: The Christmas Truce (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 09:07:43 EST
From: Newdem@xxxxxxx
Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L@xxxxxxxx>
To: LABOR-L@xxxxxxxx
Subject: The Christmas Truce

Dear Friends:

With the holiday season upon us, you may find this story appealing.
"Christmas in the Trenches" is available on the CD "Water from Another Time"
(Rounder) by John McCutcheon.

Best wishes for the holidays and the New year.

Dave Stratman
*********
                                       THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

    On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first year of World War I, German,
British, and French soldiers disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with
"the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held
Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas." "You no
shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land
strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged
photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even
roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few
short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced
them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.
    A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster
in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and
refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous
peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial. By March, 1915 the
fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back
in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million
would be slaughtered.
    Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. Military
leaders have not gone out of their way to publicize it. On Christmas Day,
1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played
"Christmas in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce, several
times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most requested
recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations. "Even more
startling than the number of requests I get is the reaction to the ballad
afterward by callers who hadn't heard it before," said the radio host. "They
telephone me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, `What the hell did I
just hear?'"
    I think I know why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story
goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a
glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened
once." It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of
the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean human life is.
It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really
could be different.

Excerpted from David G. Stratman, We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning
of Everyday Life (New Democracy Books, 1991). Available for $3.00 from New
Democracy Books, P.O. Box 427, Boston, MA 02130.



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