A Silent Night © Mike Peace 1997 The split second white hot flash from the all too close mortar rounds burned a kind of mental photographic image of the young soldiers as they crouched in their foxholes. And in these flashing images you couldnt see the pain or the cold or the blood and sweat. What you saw was the wide eyed innocence and fear and even a glisten of a tear when a good friend lay dyeing or dead in the mud. The older men, weary to exhaustion found sleep easily under the steady drone of machine gun fire, bazooka, and grenade blasts. The constant noise was numbing to the senses, even fear and adrenaline became old friends. Then suddenly, more jarring than a mortar in a neighboring foxhole was an amazing, almost deafening silence. Mouths dropped wide open, sleeping soldiers sprang up from their sleep, and eyes strained into the smoky darkness. Above was the only visible light. Was it a enemy bomber? A flare? It was not moving, it was just a star. As each soldiers gaze became riveted upon this heavenly light, a faint sound was growing in the distance. The soldiers now strained to hear above the ringing in their ears to determine what this faint sound might be. It was midnight on Christmas Eve and the sound they heard was what could only be described as a kind of melodic whisper. The sound was rapidly growing louder. Soon it had reached the bunkers. At first it sounded like a Latin prayer that was vaguely familiar and not unlike something I might have heard in …

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