A Christmas Ad…

Well worth watching…

And there IS a backstory…

The British Royal Legion gets a portion of the profits from the sales, and here’s the backstory on this Centennial of the 1st World War…

Maybe it didn’t happen exactly the way it was portrayed, but the basic authenticity is there… and NO big stars yapping… 🙂

 

Comments

A Christmas Ad… — 18 Comments

  1. I thought this was based on a true event in WWI. I believe there was a similar event in WWII, also. How hard it must have been for them to start firing on each other after that. Talk about turning off emotions…

  2. Loved the story for many years. Although he is a flaming lib, John McCutchen has a great song about it: “Christmas in the Trenches”.

  3. My great uncle Shand was in one of the units involved… the story always, always makes me cry. People are, at some depth, good. All nations, all races.

    Merry Christmas, and God bless you all.

  4. It’s dusty in here.
    I think that one of the things that makes WWI so horrible and why it remains so deeply important in the UK and Europe was that is was, in 1914, a war between cousins, in some ways closer to civil war than world war. By the end that could no longer be said; the cousins were dead.

  5. It IS a great ad and I’ve seen it in more than a few places, which is testimony to its power.

  6. Damn contacts are full of debris again. I can’t see a thing.

  7. As R. Lee Ermey told it, both sides needed to send fresh troops into the area after that because those who were there kept shooting over the heads of their enemies.

    Found this from Easter 1944, although they didn’t get out and shake hands or anything:

    GERMANS WITHHOLD FIRE TO HEAR ALLIES’ SERVICE

    The Fifth Easter of history’s bloodiest war was celebrated Sunday and worshippers were told the world must look to the lesson of Easter to find consolation for its heavy burden of sacrifice and to find hope for true victory in the peace to come.

    At Gargiliano on the Italian front, Allied and German troops–less than 400 yards apart–heard an Easter service. The Allied 5th Army’s Protestant and Roman Catholic services were broadcast to the Nazis who, within sight of the Allies’ field altar, held their fire. The Easter story was read in German and English.

    http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3x5lAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_ocNAAAAIBAJ&pg=971%2C3742563

  8. Would that such a thing could happen nowadays. I think not, as the differences back then were political and now are what passes for religious. I hope I’m wrong. Funny how I suddenly get allergic to the cats when I see videos like this one. Thanks for posting it Old NFO.