So, by early December 1914, the punishing advance of the Germans had been stopped by

the Allies before the Germans made it to Paris.

But it had been stopped at a great cost, a sickening cost.

And now the armies had settled into the trenches.

And we know what the trenches were.

Hell.

Not some metaphorical approximation of hell, but actual hell.

Hell on earth.

Artillery, mortars, machine gunfire, snipers, shrapnel, screams of the wounded and dying.

And on top of that, the environment, rain, and sleet, and snow, and flooded trenches,

and freezing cold.

And of course, death was everywhere.

Everywhere.

And there seemed no end to the horror.

But on Christmas Day, 1914, the horror did stop if only for a short time, while men for

a moment recognized the men they were fighting against as other men.

As other men with the same hopes and dreams and desires that they had themselves.

And the chief of all hope was peace.

And this is an excerpt of how the Christmas truce unfolded.

According to Henry Williamson, a British army officer who was there.

And here's what he wrote.

For weeks we had lived in flooded trenches.

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