It's December 25th. I'm Brian Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, and this is The Wright Report.

A good Christmas Day to you, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Wright Report. I hope this message finds you so very well and in great spirits today.

Because what a great day it is. For fellow Christians, today is extraordinary. It is a day to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.

His birth, I think, is spoken up so beautifully in the book of Luke, chapter 2, verse 14,

where it speaks of glory to God in the highest.

And then depending on the translation, it says,

Peace and goodwill to men, or to those with whom God is pleased.

But regardless of translation, it is a day of celebration and also of peace. And to that end, I would like to share

with you two important historical reminders of peace from world history. One story is one that you

probably have heard of before about the Christmas truce of 1914 and World War I. But the other

story you might not have heard about before, especially for my newer listeners over the past year or so.

That story takes place during the Christmas of 1944 in a very small cabin

in the Hurt and Forest between Belgium and Germany.

It is a remarkable moment between a mother, her son,

and two sets of very bloodied soldiers.

But before we get to that story of Christmas of 1944, let us be reminded this morning of Christmas

Eve of 1914. And that was not a good one. The world was just six months into World War I,

with many hoping it would be over by Christmas time, but that was not meant to be. The war would last for years more to come, eventually

taking some 16 million lives, both military and civilian. But on Christmas Eve of 1914,

something very remarkable happened. One British soldier serving at the time a private named Marmaduke

Walkington. He was sitting in his trench with his fellow soldiers when he heard something very

unusual. Here's how he described it. We were in the front line, he said, about 300 yards from

...