Honor Veterans by Creating Peace:
Stop the Wars! Ceasefire Now!
Susan Schnall and Mike Ferner / Veterans for Peace
ST. LOUIS, Missouri (December 23, 2023) — At Christmas during World War I, soldiers spontaneously laid down their arms during thehistoric Christmas Truce, causing the deadly Western Front to fall suddenly silent. Troops emerged from their freezing trenches, exchanged cigarettes and chocolate, played impromptu soccer games and buried their dead.
It was an extraordinary event—a truce created by soldiers and opposed by generals – and so hostilities soon resumed. By the end of World War, there were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded; military and civilian casualties totaled over 37 million.
The Great War, the war to end wars, turned out to be only the first world war, ushering in a century of new wars, hot and cold, local and global, colonial and imperial, conducted with the latest and most profitable machinery of death.
We in Veterans For Peace demand government leaders stop this madness of war! We call out to our sisters and brothers in uniform: stand down! drop your weapons; stop the killing in Ukraine, on the West Bank, in Gaza, Israel, Sudan, Haiti and worldwide.
We call upon all governments and civil society groups to support and welcome war resisters who refuse to kill; for governments to grant refugee status and humanitarian entry to them; and for civil society networks to offer them sanctuary and support.
Susan M. Schnall is President and Mike Ferner is National Director of Veterans For Peace.
Remembering the Christmas Truce
Every year, Veterans For Peace celebrates the anniversary of the Christmas Truce. Once again, we urge our leaders to follow the example set by the Christmas Truce soldiers who rejected militarism and the glorification of war. We call on all leaders to honor all those who have died in war by working for peace and the prevention of war.
Who better than veterans who work for peace to tell the story of these soldiers’ celebration of peace in the midst of war? There is no better way to honor the dead than to protect the living from the fear, terror and moral deprivation of war.
While Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine is in the forefront of many of our minds (read the VFP Ukraine statement), we seek an end to global militarism and the political ambitions and war profiting that benefit from military violence.
Right now, especially, society needs to hear this story that peace is possible.
ACTION: Here are ways that you can be involved in the efforts to celebrate the Christmas Truce:
- Check out the Christmas Truce Podcast
- Read and share Christmas in the Trenches
- Check out and share the below VFP-UK song on the Christmas Truce
- Spread the message on social media – Be to join in the conversation and tag the Veterans For Peace social media accounts!
US Vets Call for Holiday Truce in Ukraine
As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we feel great empathy for the young soldiers on both sides of this bloody war who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life. We say Enough is Enough – War is Not the Answer.
We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more US weapons, advisors and endless war. And certainly not a nuclear war. We want to see those billions of dollars going for climate, jobs, healthcare and housing, not for weapons manufacturers and war profiteers.
Read the full statement by members of VFP.
VFP Joins Organizations and Faith Leaders
Calling for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine
Although many of us are not people of faith, we are all people of conscience, and we can embrace the spirit and sentiment of the below statement:
“As people of faith and conscience, believing in the sanctity of all life on this planet, we call for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine. In the spirit of the truce that occurred in 1914 during the First World War, we urge our government to take a leadership role in bringing the war in Ukraine to an end through supporting calls for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, before the conflict results in a nuclear war that could devastate the world’s ecosystems and annihilate all of God’s creation.” Read more.
About the Christmas Truce
The Christmas Truce occurred on and around Christmas Day 1914. The sounds of rifles firing and shells exploding faded in a number of places along the Western Front during World War I in favor of holiday celebrations. During the unofficial ceasefire, soldiers on both sides of the conflict emerged from the trenches and shared gestures of goodwill.
Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines, and at certain points the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.
At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man’s-land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers.
The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. Some Germans lit Christmas trees around their trenches, and there was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.
Some soldiers used this short-lived ceasefire for a more somber task: the retrieval of the bodies of fellow combatants who had fallen within the no-man’s land between the lines.
The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare.
It was never repeated — future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers’ threats of disciplinary action — but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers’ essential humanity endured. Courtesy of History.com
