The interesting thing about history is that some events have been known, well, since the event. Whether it was 100s of years ago or a few days ago. Sometime ago, I read an excellent book on the history of the First World War. Also known as “The Great War”, or the “War to End All Wars”.
Along with the history and origins of the Spanish Flu, the author went into great detail on the unofficial Christmas Armistice that broke out all up and down the line of the Western Front on Christmas Eve, 1914. German and British soldiers with hesitance came out of their trenches and sang together and exchanged simple gifts. Even had a few football matches amid the barbed wire.
Other bits of history, long suppressed and known only to the few who were there, come bubbling to the surface years later through the remembrances of one of the principals.
I wrote about one of these times that became known 50 years later, when the “puzzle was finally solved”.
This is another one of those incidents, remembered by a man who then was a 12 year old boy. It only became public through a 1970s Reader’s Digest story.
He and his mother were waiting for their father to return to their cabin in the forest, when they had some unexpected visitors. And for one cold and snowy evening all hearts were open to the true meaning of Christmas.
Whether you are the man for whom this site is dedicated, and on a Christmas Eve in 2008 had “had a hole in his life that would not be filled on this side of the veil“, or a serviceman (or woman) “on the line” today somewhere in the world thinking of home and loved ones, may you find joy and peace.
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