Give Peace A Chance

“It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere,” said Albert Moren as he recalled a Christmas Eve more than hundred years ago. “And they sang ‘Silent Night.’ I shall never forget. It was one of the highlights of my life.”

Moren was a British soldier occupying a trench. The “they” doing the singing were his enemies; German soldiers just yards away, hunkering in their own trenches on the other side of the infamous “No Man’s Land” of the First World War. Moren was describing the impromptu Christmas Truce of 1914.

Thousands of troops – Allied and German forces – poured from their fortifications to celebrate Christmas together. No rifles; no bombs or bayonets; only the singing of carols and the exchanging of modest gifts – cans of beef and jars of sweet jam.

The Great War was only a few months old at the time…