Outbreak of Peace
© 2010 Tim Fort
IT was a dark and snowy night. Under the dim moonlight, two gaunt uniformed figures stood facing each other. The French Poilu stared with frightened eyes at the German soldier who was within a bayonet’s thrust of him. The German Soldat, in turn, stared at the French soldier with equal intensity, trying to gauge his state of mind. It was the Great War, and they were under standing orders to kill each other on sight.
Then the German soldier made his move. His left hand, concealed under his overcoat, suddenly shot out, and he thrust a small object towards the French solider. As he placed the newspaper-wrapped box in the Poilu’s hand, he grinned from under his walrus moustache and shouted, “Fröhliche Weihnachten!”
A smile broke out on the French soldier’s face and he wished the German a “Joyeux Noël!” In exchange, he handed the Soldat a small box wrapped with a piece of bright cloth. Then more soldiers started exchanging presents. A couple of them even hugged. The Christmas Day Armistice of 1914 had just broken along the Western Front and the guns had fallen silent for the first time since that awful day in July.
In the Great Silence beyond the world, an Unseen One who had been observing events for eons was delighted at this sudden outbreak of peace, and, on a whim, decided to assist them further. An alabaster hand reached out and grasped a silvery knob marked ‘Universal Brotherly-Love Coefficient’. The hand deftly turned the knob to the right, raising the coefficient from 2.8 to 4.2 Frogers for this particular spacetime.
A British solider from Liverpool remarked to his counterpart from Düsseldorf, “Bloody shame that we’ll need to take up the grim task of killing one another again by Boxing Day.” The German nodded and remarked in broken English that it was indeed a great shame, and then they patted each other on the back.
A French corporal who had a little too much cognac to drink spoke up in halting English, “Mes frères, I ‘ave nozzing against you Zhermans personally.” He spat, “Zut alors, it’s zose infernal politicians!”
An Austrian enlisted man, his schnapps speaking for him, added, “Und I haff nossing against you auch. It’s der Krupp, he’s making der profiteering, nicht wahr?”
A Briton who was also in his cups declared, “Who says we ‘ave to kill each other, mates? I rather like you chaps, and frankly I think that Guy Fawkes bloke ‘ad a good ideer goin’ meself. To bloody ‘ell with 'em armchair warriors!”
Then a Turkish liaison attached with the German army opined, “I know nothing of your religion, but it is my understanding that your Christ said, ‘he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword’? I have always been baffled by how you Christians can kill each other over petty political differences.”
A Scottish chaplain chipped in, “‘E’s right, noo! I din a learn ‘Love thy Neighbor’ from me Mam for nothing! Doon wit’ this damnable war and to the divil with these inferrrnal wippons a death!”
A German sergeant named Schultzi who was a toy maker in peacetime said, “Ven mine colonel tellink me to fight you, mine Freunds, I vill zay to him, ‘Ich weiß nichts!’”
Soon, it was ratified by all of those men gathered in the heavy snow in that forest near Cherbourg that there would be no more shooting–unless, perhaps, the guns were aimed the other way. As the mutiny spread over the other trenches that magical Yuletide, millions of other soldiers started shaking hands, giving presents, and getting acquainted with each other. Pictures of loved ones and children were exchanged among tobacco-stained hands, pick-up football games broke out with any round kickable object at hand, and soon, old school songs and vaudeville standards sung off-key could be heard over the snowy battlefields.
And from that moment on, peace swept over all of the troops involved in the War to End All Wars. Certain red-faced generals and barons barked orders in desperation, but the enlisted men feigned incomprehension. There were dire orders to obey or face a firing squad for desertion and treason, but the sudden outbreak of decency had affected almost all of the fighting men, so the commanding officers soon gave up in disgust. Then many of the commanders themselves succumbed to the virulent good-neighborliness that had become a plague.
The mutiny soon engulfed the entire armed forces of Europe on all fronts, and the folks back at home had a glimmer of hope that they’d see their sons and husbands again, alive and in good health. The various armchair warriors at home were horrified by the outbreak of non-bloodshed and emitted a flurry of orders and declarations. But, alas, their shrill orders to kill in the name of God and Country went unheard by the masses. Naturally immune from brotherly love, war profiteers and saber rattlers everywhere broke down and wept. To satiate their blood lust, they were forced to abuse their servants or go out and kill small animals instead.
For the other 99.9% of humanity in Europe, it would be a golden year after that Christmas. 1915 would forever be known as the Summer of Love as people all over the Continent gave up the form of institutionalized murder known as war. Britons befriended Austrians, French peasants embraced German peasants, and Turks lived peacefully with Armenians. The hate-mongers and rabid nationalists were so horrified by the general decency and goodwill that they started to fear that revolution might be in the cards.
Millions of soldiers returned to their parents, wives, girlfriends, and children alive and unscathed. A fresh-faced Marine, Smedley Butler, let his reinlistment lapse and started a Quaker commune instead. Munitions factories lay dormant, chemical plants made medicines instead of poison gas, and shipyards were forced to produce pleasure craft. Young men married and begat children instead of fertilizing the soil at Ypres and Verdun with their blood. Military officers permanently retired from active fighting and limited their future visions of world conquest to endless games of whist and chess.
Then a smile crossed the ageless visage of the Unseen One. He was pleased that his meddling in this particular space-time continuum went well, and now he wanted to do something even grander. With the fragrance of habifropzipulops wafting about His divine countenance, the alabaster hand of the Unseen One reached out, grasped a golden knob marked ‘Global Authoritarianism Resistance Quotient’, and boldly turned it to the left.
The End