Christmas 1914, Pt. 3: Peace on Earth

On the third afternoon came a message from the Germans
"At midnight, our staff officers visit
And we must fire our automatic Pistolen
But we will fire higher
Nevertheless
Please, keep undercover"
At 11:00 p.m., Berlin midnight
We saw flashes going away
Into the air
Two days later, an army order came from GHQ
To the effect that men found fraternizing with the enemy
Would be court marshaled and
If found guilty, would suffer the death penalty
And again, in that place
The very lights soared over no-man's-land at night
And bullets cut showers of splinters from trees
And, sometimes, human flesh
And bone
So, hope
Sank into the mud again
But did not die
Despite a withering anew as each poor human unit fell
In machine-gun and mortar blast
And colossal reverberating
Rending of the shells of those four years
The years whose truth seems to be incommunicable
Sometimes, as one listens to what people say
Here in the England a generation died for
It seems like
Almost pre-war again
Can it be
That we lack imagination
To see the other fellow
As ourselves?

And Henry Williamson
Continued to fight
He was eventually
Wounded by gas
And when he was declared unfit to serve in the army
He then volunteered
For the Air Force To see if that could get him back to the front
But he didn't make it back to the front, luckily
Because the war ended
The war ended
But not before 20 million were wounded
And 17 million men were killed
Men
Just normal men
Gone
So
This
Holiday season
Please
Think of those men and women
Around the world in the trenches now
Risking life and limb for what they believe in
For freedom
And think of the civilians
Trapped in those hellish places
Suffering in the merciless path of war

And finally
As Henry Williamson asked
Let us not lack the imagination to think
To think of other men
As men
Men like ourselves
Men like
Us
Merry Christmas to all
And may there be peace
On Earth