Elisabeth vincken biography of barack
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Christmas at war: A cabin in the Hurtgen Forest
An artist’s impression from The Illustrated London News of Jan.9, 1915, “British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches.” [Wikimedia]
It was Christmas Eve 1914. The Tommies of Britain’s Queen’s Westminster Regiment had returned to the kall trenches the previous day, relieving regular troops after four days of rest.
Suddenly, in the stillness and cold, the voice of a ung farmer’s son, Edgar Aplin, rose up from the frozen earth with “Tommy, Lad!,” a popular song written in 1907 bygd American lyricist Edward Teschemacher and composer E.J. Margetson:
Tommy, lad! Tommy, lad!
Though you’re scarce a wee year old;
Yet you’re long and you’re strong,
And your head’s a mass of gold;
And you’ve got a mighty will of your own,
You’ve got a kind of way,
That will carry you along, I know;
When you face the world one day,
Tommy lad!
A few hundred
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The Other Christmas Truce
The story of the Christmas truce of 1914 is well known to us: Allies and Germans laid down their arms and exchanged greetings and gifts, played football matches, and even took photos together. But there is another, lesser-known Christmas truce that took place thirty years later, on Christmas Eve 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive in the West. In a hunter’s hut in the Hürtgenwald, on the German side of the Belgian border, four German and three American soldiers laid down their weapons and shared Christmas dinner.
The Vincken family hut was home to Elisabeth Vincken and her 12-year-old son, Fritz. Her husband, Hubert, was a baker by trade, but now belonged to the Reichsluftschutzdienst (air protection service) in the German town of Monschau, a few kilometres away. The family was from Aachen but, because of the Allied bombing raids, mother and son had moved into the hut.
Hubert was unable to attend that evening, so Elisabeth d
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A Christmas miracle during the Battle of the Bulge
By William Haupt III
The Center Square
“For a day, the God of goodwill was once more master of this corner of the earth when He united opposing men of different honors to share brotherly love in His name." – Jean-Paul Sartre
In many sectors along the Western Front during World War I, troops spontaneously stopped fighting at Christmas and enjoyed a brief but welcome respite from the horrors of war. Such moments of humanity were largely lacking from World War II. But one notable exception occurred during the Battle of the Bulge, when seven young soldiers were spared from the fighting on Christmas Eve.
During World War II, due to the love and courage of a mother, a miracle took place on Christmas Eve in the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge. Elisabeth Vincken from the German city of Aachen was forced to seek a new home when her house and bakery were destroyed by an Allied bombing raid. They fled to a small hun