Picture the first winter of World War I. British and German soldiers are freezing in muddy trenches, sometimes close enough to shout across to each other. Late on Christmas Eve 1914, the British troops heard the Germans singing carols and saw lanterns and little fir trees lined up along the enemy trenches. Men started calling back and forth. On Christmas Day, soldiers from both sides climbed out and met in No Man’s Land. They swapped gifts, took pictures together, buried their dead, and in some spots even kicked a football around. It didn’t happen everywhere, and the fighting started back up, but for a few hours the men who were supposed to kill each other stood side by side as human beings.
In 1915, Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was squeezed and crushed by Antarctic sea ice and sank, leaving his men stranded on the ice. Shackleton led an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats, even sailing a lifeboat across brutal seas to go get help. For over a century nobody knew exactly where the ship was. Then in March 2022 an expedition using underwater robots found it nearly two miles down in the Weddell Sea, upright, intact, and with the name ENDURANCE still clearly visible on the stern.
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British runner Derek Redmond was finally healthy and running well in the 400-meter semifinal. About 150 meters in, his right hamstring tore and he crumpled to the track. He waved off the stretcher and started hobbling toward the finish. His dad, Jim, pushed past the officials, came onto the track, put his arm around his son, and helped him along while 65,000 people stood and cheered. Right before the line, Jim let go so Derek could finish the race on his own.
Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese army officer sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines near the end of World War II with orders never to surrender. The war ended in 1945, but he refused to believe it. Leaflets were dropped and search parties were sent, and he dismissed every one of them as a trick. He stayed in the jungle for 29 years, still fighting a war that was long over. Finally, in March 1974, his old commanding officer flew in and personally told him he could stand down.
In November 1873, Anna Spafford and the couple’s four daughters sailed for Europe on the S.S. Ville du Havre while her husband Horatio stayed behind in Chicago on business. The ship was rammed by another vessel and sank within minutes. Anna was pulled from the water unconscious, but all four girls drowned, and she sent Horatio a cable that began ‘Saved alone.’ On his way across the ocean to bring her home, Horatio wrote that he had passed over the spot where the ship went down, but that his girls were safe, folded, the dear lambs. Out of that grief came the hymn we still sing, ‘It Is Well with My Soul.’
