A Christmas Truce
A short Drabble on the Christmas Truce of 1914. I know, Christmas is long passed, but looking back on WW1 is always a viable option.
Two soldiers stood. Both clad in German storm trooper uniforms, one carrying a light machine gun in his hands and in body armor over his face and chest, the heavy steel reflecting sunlight of the dark morning. The other stood close by, with a pouch on his back holding crutches, a satchel at his side holding bandages and morphine, and a rifle in his hand.
"Do you think the British know what day it is?" The Medic asked the other.
The Sentry turned to him, and spoke monotonously through the steel mask covering his face. "I doubt it. They wouldn't know right from left if you explained the whole concept to them fifty times."
They looked back over the destroyed land, dubbed no-mans-land. No person, living that is, could set foot on that ground. Sniper fire, shells raining from the skies, and the constant droning of a machine gun would promptly be heard should someone move forward. And that someone would be dead.
The Medic and Sentry were the men being told to move up, and enter no man's land. There were no other men within a five hundred foot radius that were wearing German uniforms. It would be an oddity to see a British mk 1 helmet peek over a ridge as well.
They trudged up to the very edge, lying on their stomachs and looking out, and spotting four English troops. Mk 1 helmets. Faces underneath the helmets. Rifles in hands. But they weren't soldiers to the two German troops. They were faces, sure, but they weren't people behind the rifles and sub machine guns and larger caliber weaponry, they were targets, or if they were a tanker or pilot, novelty rivet storage bags. However, this image was about to change. Drastically.
The Medic readied his rifle, while the Sentry stood to his feet and held his machine gun.
The British soldiers immediately hurried to cover, pointing their rifles at the German's from behind it. A few tense seconds passed. Not a trigger was pulled. Not a shot rang out. Not a sound was made other than a small drizzle of rain arriving and coming down. The air was hot, and arid.
One of the British soldiers stood up from behind cover, keeping his Springfield rifle aimed at the German medic's head, but didn't pull the trigger.
"Do you know what day it is?!" The British assault troop yelled. They were a long distance away, as to where a pistol wouldn't be affective, but a rifle would. A distance as to where it would be required to yell to be heard.
"Ja! Do you know what day it is!?" The Medic yelled back, peeking his head out from cover, his own Pickelhaube showing it's famous spike.
They glared at one another. They kept their weapons readied.
An American accent rang out, attention grabbing. "Bro, it's Christmas!" He shouted, keeping his head ducked and clinging to his Lewis gun for dear life.
"Can... Can we make a deal!?" The German medic shakily shouted in reply. The Sentry looked down at him. "What are you doing?" "I'm making a truce with the British! Think about it! We can put our guns down for one!" He hurriedly said to the Sentry quietly.
An Australian accent suddenly thundered into the shouting match. "Why the bloody 'ell would we want to make a deal with you of all people, krauts!?" The German Sentry frowned, even if one couldn't see it through his steel mask.
"So we can finally put these damn rifles down and possibly.. You know.. Talk!" The American piped in again. The Australian popped up from cover, looking in the direction the American's voice had come from incredulously. His face was awed. "Why do you trust them to put their rifles down?! And talk?!"
The German Medic seemed to become aggravated. "How about we just stop shooting at one another! Just for Christmas! Just for the lord's birthday!" The British troops looked at him, hollering with all his lungs power, and the British troops didn't know that either German knew of Christianity. They thought they were mindless brutes. Heathens.
The last soldier in an English uniform remained silent, his gaze set at the ground, before piping up just a little. "W-Why can't we just s-stop shooting guys?" He looked around for support from the rest of the troops around him.
"That does sound tempting.." The American said. He stood up from cover, all the way up so he was standing straight. He made an example of handing his rifle to the soldier next to him, who looked... Surprisingly similar. Were they brothers?
He then began a slow and cautious pace toward the two now incredulous and mortified German troops on the high ground. The American finally made it to the two Germans, and tilted his head, smiling. "Sup bros?"
The Medic dropped his jaw. "Uhm.. Uh hi." He switched his rifle to his left hand and shook the American's with his right.
The American nodded. The German Sentry idly stared down the American, raising an eyebrow behind his mask, before undoing the leather straps on the back of his head and taking off the plate of steel to reveal his blue eyes and face, his blues examining and determining, sizing up the foreigner on his land wearing British colors on his shoulder. He stepped down slowly, heavy boots smashing the mud and shook the American's hand.
The other Brit, Aussie, and Canadian stood and stared, having stood up from cover now that both of the Germans had holstered their weapons.
The other three British troops hurriedly approached. They soon stood just in front of the German duo. They were lined left to right in front of them, the Aussie, Brit, and Canadian finally at the far right. They all collectively shook hands, and when finished, they stared at one another. Then the American chuckled.
"You guys ever played football?" The other six men nodded. The American reached into his rucksack, pulling out an American football. Five of them rose an eyebrow, and the Canadian tried to hide his blush and facepalm.
"What?" "What... What even is that." The Brit seemed baffled. "It's a football!" "Alfred... Alfred, in Europe it's different." "Oooooooooh." NOW the other six facepalmed. "Here, it's round. And not brown." The Brit politely explained, placing a hand on the American's shoulder.
The American frowned but then smirked for a second, before frowning again. "My life is a lie." He said with a tone of a kid who was about to cry. The other men laughed and then frowned again, looking at one another. Waiting for one to draw a weapon and ruin the strange peace.
Waiting.
Nothing happened. The German Sentry's lower lip trembled and he thanked the lord no one noticed silently. He let one tear leave him and that was it.
He bent over and sat down, trench coat protecting him from the mud and other elements, he began to instruct the other German and four allies to go find wood. He had an idea.
Roughly an hour later of scrounging up flammable objects, the Sentry smirked, taking a match from his coat, lighting it, and tossing it onto the pile of wood and fabrics, and watching it burst into flames almost immediately. He smirked wider. "Ja... Ja this will work." He looked at the American who had already one strange and unnecessary item in his pack. "Have you got marshmallows?"
"As a matter of fact, I do!" He smirked like an idiot. "Don't think you're so clever, Amerikiner, bringing marshmallows to the battlefield may not be a good idea." He said softly, before the American rolled his eyes and handed him the medium size bag. "Eat up, kraut."
/several hours later,/
"...an' then I said, 'that's not a knoife'! I drew my Kukri an' said 'THIS, THIS is a knoife!'"
The Australian laughed loudly.
The other men joined in, the Canadian and the German Medic a little nervous.
"Vell, that was a great story, but the night has become old.." The German Sentry said, a disappointed tone is his voice.
The American began to laugh arrogantly "Dude, Christmas night lasts forever when I'm with friends this good!" The other men around him clenched their teeth at the sentence, and wished it was true.
The Two Germans could tell, it couldn't be any younger than 2 AM. They stood. "Vell, you see, both our commanding officers will be expecting a report on what both you and us did today... How much ground we gained.." He frowned. "So, it looks like tomorrow we will divide up the lands and go our separate ways, make sure we aren't sent back to this front?"
"Dude. I value my pulse. Our commanding officer as a psycho! He wouldn't let us transfer theaters if someone held a gun to his head and told him to." The American pouted. "Oh chin up chap, I'm sure we won't kill each other tomorrow morning, right?" The Brit put on a fake smile and turned to the two Germans. They shared a glare.
It lasted twenty minutes, of everlasting, evil, putrid silence. Then, both Germans stood up, and plodded back to German lines of the previous morning. "What arschollen." "I know ja!?"
/the following morning/
Both Germans hadn't slept. They trudged through the snow and mud once more, sitting down in the same trench they had been in the previous morning. It was December 26th. Nine o'clock in the morning. No casualties since December 24th on this front.
The American clenched his teeth. He held up his Springfield rifle and aimed, looking at the German Medic's helmet. He could make a watermelon like explosion of his head. But he didn't. Yet.
The German medic caught sight of him. Opened his mouth to yell "DUCK!" But was cut off by a 7x62 bullet striking him in the forehead. He fell to the ground, dead.
The German Sentry, having seen the American reveal his position by firing, held his light machine gun as his hip and gunned down the American soldier.
The rest of the allied soldiers suddenly charged over the side of a trench at the German sentry. The Sentry growled, hoisting his big gun in their direction and letting off a series of shots, blowing away the Brit, while the Aussie popped off a shot with his rifle, a special armor piercing bullet tearing through the armor and into the Sentry's shoulder.
The Sentry fell to his knees, dropping his heavy weapon and gripping his shoulders, before another one hit him in the abdomen, he flopped into the mud face first, and let out a defeated noise, curling up due to the pain of the fragmented metal in his shoulder and intestines, he looked up slowly, the Aussie and Canadian standing before him.
The Sentry growled roughly like a caged animal, a lion in taming. "I will-" he coughed up a large amount of blood into the mud. "FUCKING KILL!-" he coughed once more, and found himself out of breath to speak, and curled in once more, letting another whimper free.
The Canadian's lower lip trembled. "U-Uhm.." He sloshed through the mud, carrying his stolen Gasser pistol, the large caliber silver engravements glinting in the morning sun, he raised it to point at the German sentry. He could practically see the fallen soldier's glare through the bullet proof mask.
"S-Should we kill him?" The Canadian questioned. "It's.. It's Christmas Eve.." The Australian rolled his eyes, snatching the pistol from the only remaining brother of the North American brothers, and trudging toward the fallen German, undoing the leather straps holding his mask on,
And blew away his face. The Australian wore a strange expression, one of disgust but very slight guilt, while the Canadian looked shocked. Completely destroyed mentally.
The fallen had finally fallen and splattered into the mud. The two Allied soldiers looked at the body.. What they had done..
The battlefield hell of 1914 had resumed.
Bullets flew. It costed lives.
Many. Many lives.
The war would continue for three more years.
Hell would be a common term to describe the conflict.
More than 7,000,000 of the world's finest were killed. Towns were burned. Borders were crossed. Morals were abandoned and tainted. Men were driven mad. And several lines were drawn on the map, new ones.
And the world was changed forever.