Yes we know Christmas was two weeks ago. But given all of the 100 year retrospectives on the famous First World War "Christmas Truce"of 1914 we thought our readers should know that in actuality the Christmas period was for many First World War Western Front combatants hardly as peaceful as the mainstream media would lead one to believe.
By Bryan J. Dickerson*
For many British and German soldiers, Christmas 1914 was a time to temporarily halt the incessant killing of the First World War.
It is the end of an era. The final living WWI veteran, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) waitress Florence Green, passed away at age 110. Green served in the RAF for the war's final two months in 1918, having joined at the age of 17.
Though WWI is often overshadowed by WWII it is important to remember the tremendous impact the First World War had on modern history.
On May 13, 1938 an Act of Congress established Armistice Day as a national holiday, following up on President Woodrow Wilson's November 11, 1919 proclamation of the first Armistice Day honoring American veterans who fought in WWI. Though WWI did not formally end until the Treay of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919; in the US, Armistice Day, with the armistice marking the temporary end of combat on November 11, 1918, is widely regarded as the end of the First World War.
In April of 1915 soldiers from the British Army and Commonwealth, including the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps, and French Army and Empire, landed on the Gallipoli penninsula in an effort to open the route to Russia and seize Constantinople. There they faced Turkish troops from the Ottoman Empire in a brutal campaign fought in rugged terrain featuring extensive trench systems separated at certain points by as few as 10 to 20 yards. An ongoing archaeological survey has uncovered not only artificacts from ths First World War battle, but also has led to a greater understanding of how the men
