Posted on 12/24/2004 2:43:23 PM PST by Colt .45
My grandfather laid in Flander's field for dead for three days before there was a "truce" to collect the dead and they found him to be still alive.
Every Veteran's day when I hear the poem "Flander's Field", I think of my grandfather who was left for dead at 17, and lived an additional 59 years. He was my Hero while alive and my Hero since his passing.
My granddad was in WWI. He was commissioned in the Engineers, never saw combat. So was our next door neighbor when we first married. He was infantry and was gassed in the Argonne Forest. It crippled him for the rest of his life - he died of emphysema and lung cancer.
A sad retelling of the tale of the Christmas Truce:
Funny, my dad lifted mines for the 79th Camerons in WWII -- so they could do grave reg. They occasionally found somebody still alive.
No. No it isn't. Not at all.
But the miracle of 1914 happened before gas was used. The first use of gas was by the Germans in 1915. But for one day (Dec.25th, 1914) men laid down their arms and found the dignity of being men again. After that day it became business as usual.
They don't want to fight, they want to die for Allah and their god is a god of murder and rape so they try their hardest to please him.
Periodically when it got too bad he would go into the VA to get his lungs cleaned out. We used to babysit his pet goat Leona while he was in the hospital. They kept him running til he was almost 90 - he died some time in the early 80s IIRC.
There was a Christmas bombing truce early in World War II, too, apparently initiated by the Germans. There is a good if somewhat vague reference to Christmas truces in the movie "A Midnight Clear," a fine WW II movie.
IT is a beautiful story.. every time I hear it. Thanks for the ping Colt. Merry Christmas!
Absolutely right. WWI was a huge mistake born of misunderstandings and foolish pride all around. By the time that was known to all the higher-ups, the war had already claimed millions--millions who would've died for nothing had they called the whole thing off. Imagine the purge they would've faced had the populace known the truth!
...
“... This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle—there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
The British and German soldiers came from quite similar backgrounds, and there was no quarrel between them. They'd gone to war because their countries had a very distant and abstract disagreement, not an ancestral or passionate hatred. And the two peoples had much respect for each other.
Thus, when British and German were thrown against each other there was an impulse to come together, if at all possible. This was probably weaker and fraternization less common where the Germans faced the French or the Russians, for feelings were more embittered between those countries.
Coming together across the lines at Christmas was certainly amazing, but it simply highights how ghastly the rest of the war was. In most wars, animosities can be used to justify the killing, and indeed, both sides tried to stir up war feeling to the highest possible degree. But perhaps, where such feelings really don't exist the killing and the waste look even worse, if possible, than they otherwise would be though.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
Thomas Hardy, "The Man He Killed"
Our present fight is not with those of our similar faith. No truce with these Islamic devils can be taken in good faith.
Note: this topic is from the FRchives and probably years past. Adding to the GGG catalog.
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