In the classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, German author and veteran Erich Maria Remarque wrote of war causing the “annihilation of all human feeling.”
Horrors of World War I led to that conclusion, yet from that same conflict came a legendary Christmas celebration that shows the amazing depth of humanity.
Each year, Sir Andrew Hamilton lays a wreath at the World War I monument in his small English village — a tribute to the grandfather he barely knew.
“I just remember an old man who shouted a lot because he was deaf, and he lost his hearing really during the First World War. So he was really quite frightening,” Hamilton said. “And then when I read his diaries, I was amazed, I suppose, at the life that he had been involved in.”
As Hamilton writes in his book, Meet at Dawn Unarmed, his grandfather, Capt. Robert Hamilton, kept diaries from 1913 to 1950. Most years were fairly mundane, with one remarkable exception: 1914.
“Wednesday the 5th of August. Wire to mobilize at 5:30 am,” Hamilton’s grandfather wrote. “Capt. Hamilton was part of the initial wave of British troops in what came to be known as the First World War.”
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