JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska —
The "Chaplain's Corner" offers perspectives to enhance spiritual/religious resiliency in support of Air Force and Army Comprehensive Fitness programs.
Comments regarding specific beliefs, practices, or behaviors are strictly those of the author and do not convey endorsement by the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, the Army, the Air Force, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or the 673d Air Base Wing.
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"Good morning, Fritz." (No answer).
"Good morning, Fritz." (Still no answer).
"GOOD MORNING, FRITZ!"
From German trenches: "Good morning."
From our trench: "How are you?"
"All right."
"Come over here, Fritz."
"No. If I come I get shot."
"No you won't. Come on."
"No - fear."
"Come and get some fags, Fritz."
"No. You come halfway, and I meet you."
"All right."
"One of our fellows thereupon stuffed his pocket with fags and got over the trench ... the German got over his trench, and right enough, they met half way and shook hands, Fritz taking the fags and giving cheese in exchange."
(Excerpted from a letter written by Private H. Scrutton, Essex Regiment, and published in the Norfolk Chronicle on January 1, 1915.)
The letter records the peace that prevailed between the trenches of warring German and British soldiers in Private Scrutton's sector on Christmas Day of 1914 - one hundred years ago.
The trenches, and the ground between them - "no man's land" - were a bloody, icy mess.
For months, the fighting had taken this grotesque form.
Increasingly, even then, it was presumed victory would be more the product of attrition than of strategy.
It was unthinkable that a man would climb up over the slick frozen sludge and make himself a frost-breathing target, too easy to miss.
Someone screwed up his courage and went first.
Somewhere along the endless trenches, stretching from Lorraine in the south all the way to the English Channel in the north, someone climbed out of those death-miles of trench, and, silhouetted against the shell-battered world, stood bare with his hand extended.
It must have been a picture of incredible beauty.
A man standing on that tortured ground, barbed wire strung like malicious garland on all sides.
A man in ragged, muddied khakis or thread-bare, field-grey wool - no rifle, no bayonet, moving toward his enemy in an act of defiant goodwill.
It worked.
Right there, in the middle of a war, peace broke out. Other soldiers clambered joyfully out of trenches, exchanging handshakes and cigarettes in "no man's land."
Some shared scraps of meals, made feasts because of extravagant, boundary-busting kindness.
Soccer games were played amidst laughter and friendly cheers; and the same voices, thick with the pain of combat hours before, fused in melodic agreement concerning Jesus, the promise of real and lasting peace:
All hail! Lord, we greet thee,
Born this happy morning,
O Jesus, for evermore be thy name adored.
Word of the father, now in flesh appearing;
O come, let us adore him,
O come, let us adore him,
O come, let us adore him,
Christ the Lord.
I doubt many missed the bigger story that moment was re-telling.
When that first soldier stood up out of a trench and, like the echo of a promise made nineteen hundred years before, walked toward his enemy with empty hands outstretched, it was an incredibly powerful reminder of the God who interrupted our warring - all brave and vulnerable, breathing Bethlehem air like a moving target.
It happened.
God, right in the muck, became flesh, clambered down to meet us - not stately like a bureaucrat touring the front-lines, but
like a soldier, muddy and valiant and wonderful.
God stepped into "no man's land," hands stretched out, bringing peace and not a sword. It happened. The promise of an eternal truce.