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Tuesday, December 24th, 2013
| Time | Event |
| 12:00p | Marines gather near a bunker for Christmas services, December...  Marines gather near a bunker for Christmas services, December 1966 |
| 1:00p | Starting on Christmas Eve—24 December 1914—many German and...   Starting on Christmas Eve—24 December 1914—many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other across No Man’s Land; some Allied soldiers would swear they even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing. At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines, cautiously calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their own trenches and shook hands. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings, sang carols and their own native songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of football. In a more somber manner, some soldiers used the short-lived ceasefire: to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades who had been left between the lines. The Christmas Truce of 1914, as it would be known, came only five months after the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. It would become one of the last examples of an outdated notion of war chivalry, something that would die quickly to the modern warfare that was emerging. It was an event that was never repeated—future attempts to recreate the holiday ceasefire were quashed by officers’ threat of being put up against the wall—but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutality of war, a soldier’s essential humanity could endure. |
| 2:00p | Christmas dinner at the refugee camp at An Hoa given by the 5th...  Christmas dinner at the refugee camp at An Hoa given by the 5th Marine Regiment/December 1969 |
| 3:00p | "It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and about 7 or 8 in “It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and about 7... |
| 4:00p | Barbed Wire Doesn’t Stop Them—A Marine with fixed bayonet...  Barbed Wire Doesn’t Stop Them—A Marine with fixed bayonet leads others around a barbed wire entanglement on the beach at Tarawa as the Marines took the island/November 1943 |
| 5:00p | "The last I saw of this little affair was a vision of one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an “The last I saw of this little affair was a vision of one of my machine gunners, who was a bit... |
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