This year we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI -- or the Great War -- in Europe. In the midst of this commemoration, we will do well to remember the remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914. The khaki uniformed British soldiers and grey uniformed German soldiers on the Western Front crawled out of their trenches and walked across the barbed wire into a no-mans-land where they commingled on Christmas 1914. A century later it seems so strange to think of the soldiers laying down their rifles for a time so they could recognize one another as people and not only enemies.
Also strange is the fact that such a truce has happened since 1914. 54 years later in 1968 during the Vietnam War, government leaders in Saigon and Hanoi declared a 24-hour Christmas truce. I know about that truce because I was there.
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