When Peace Broke Out

Remembrance Day and Christmas are both heavy on my mind. Lately I have been working on learning the John McCutcheon ballad, Christmas in the Trenches. It’s a poignant song that tells the tale of a young English soldier in the trenches during the First World War.

It’s Christmas Day, 1914. Soldiers on both sides are hunkered down in their miserable trenches. They are trying desperately to survive the human meat grinder that caused more than 37 million causalities in four bloody years. Wafting over one of the bitter cold and unusually still battlefields of France, there comes a lone German voice. It’s singing a Christmas carol. Soon his comrades join him in harmony. Not to be outdone, the boys from the English side respond with God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman. The German side counters with Stille Nacht and soon both sides are singing Silent Night together in their own languages.

A young German soldier climbs out of the trenches with a flag of truce and walks right into the gun sights of the other side. Soon men from both sides put down their weapons and walk into No Man’s Land as peace breaks out in the midst of a muddy, bloody war. Soldiers from both armies exchange gifts of chocolate, cigarettes and pictures of family back home. Before sundown, a friendly soccer match is played before soldiers drift back to their opposing trenches.

My grandpa was a veteran of that horrible “War to End All Wars.” He served with the famed 54th Kootenay Battalion and spent from 1915 to 1918 in the trenches of all the major battles. I have just finished polishing all of his medals and mounting them in a frame for display beneath a picture of him with the 54th Battalion band. It makes the McCutcheon song particularly poignant for me.

The story that the song tells is apparently a true one. McCutcheon has said that a veteran once told him that the only thing that is perhaps not accurate in the song is that it implies the 1914 Christmas truce only happened one time, at one point along the miles and miles of trenches on the Western Front.

Apparently, much to the chagrin of the war command on both sides, it happened several times at several different places along the front line, which meandered all the way from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France. In fact, it has been estimated that the unsanctioned Christmas truce of 1914 involved over 100,000 British and German soldiers. It has been documented that in some places along the front it took until New Year’s for the war command to stir up hostilities again. And if that is not grand enough, it is reported that peace broke out in a similarly unorchestrated and very unmilitary way during Christmas of 1915. Recently it has come to light that Canadian troops reported in their letters home that a similar Christmas truce happened at Vimmy Ridge in 1916. It appears that for at least three of the four horrible years of the First World War, the gospel of Jesus Christ, remembered and sung out in the midst of battle, had the power to cause peace to break out in spite of the masters of war who vehemently forbade it and in some cases viciously prosecuted those who participated.

This story of peace breaking out in the midst of a particularly dreadful war as the gospel of Jesus Christ was recalled and carolled on the battlefield, give the words of Jesus an amazing trajectory. In the gospels, Jesus spoke often about peace. At one point in John’s account he is quoted as saying: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27). The apostle maintained that this peace surpassed all human understanding and had the capacity to guard one’s heart and mind when it broke out in the midst of the conflict and turmoil surrounding one’s life (Philippians 4:7). I wonder; is it really true? Is it really true that the peace of Jesus can break out when any peace at all seems impossible and that it can significantly change people and even situations?

History would seem to indicate that it is. But beyond that, over and over again, personal testimony would say that it is true, too. I have my great grandfather’s diary from 1910. He was a Methodist missionary working the extremely stormy waters and rugged coastline of B.C. on the mission boats, the Udahl and the Homespun. There is an entry telling about him conducting a worship service on Monday, February the 7th and he writes: “… (today) my son Fred V. Webber gave himself to Christ of his own free will. Praise God!”

My grandpa was 18 years old when he gave his life to Christ that day. I have the premium leather bound Bible given to him by his dad around the same time. It quite obviously and literally went through the trenches with him. It is battle-worn and scarred like you can hardly imagine. But the amazing thing is that grandpa didn’t come back from the war that way. Grandpa, who was truly a second father for me, was perhaps the most intact and peace-filled person I have ever known. He not only found personal peace in his turmoil-filled life, but he seemed to bring peace into any situation that he was involved in. Did I mention he was a soldier through the entire Second World War as well as the First, and survived the Dirty ‘30s to boot? No one will ever convince me the peace that broke out in him and through him came from any other source than Jesus Christ.

So this Remembrance Day, I am pondering this peace as I recall the many wars of the past century, my grandfather and Jesus. Is there any hope for me as I face the turmoil and battles in my own life and times?

This morning I was awakened early to listen in prayer. Jesus was there, too. He quite literally said: “Peace be with you, David.” And as I pondered that seeming impossibility, he whispered: “Trust me.”