Christmas Disasters

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This week is our Christmas special here on the train. First, we've covered Krampus, Christmas killings, and ghost story Christmas traditions. Then, in keeping with our tradition of crazy Christmas episodes, today, we bring you some crazy Christmas disasters! Christmas isn't immune to crazy shit going on, from natural disasters to fires. Not only that, we're giving you guys a pretty good dose of history today. So with that being said, let's get into some crazy Christmas stuff!

 

While this first topic isn't necessarily a disaster in the usual sense, it definitely caused nothing but problems. And yes, it's a disaster. In 1865 on Christmas Eve, something happened that would change things for many people in this country and still causes grief to this day. While most people in the u.s. were settling down for the night with their families, leaving milk out for Santa, and tucking the kids in for the night, a group of men in Pulaski, Tennessee, were getting together for a very different purpose. Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe were all officers with the Confederacy in the civil war. That night, they got together to form a group inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. While it started as a social club, within months, it would turn into one of the most nefarious groups around, the Ku Klux Klan. According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ...The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all – that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do." It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from the sons of Malta with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan," according to Albert Stevens in 1907.

In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention. They established what they called an "Invisible Empire of the South." Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or "grand wizard," of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans, and grand cyclops. The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction, put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson's relatively lenient Reconstruction policies from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts. Each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted "equal protection" of the Constitution to formerly enslaved people and enacted universal male suffrage. From 1867 onward, Black participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction. Black people won elections to southern state governments and even the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both Black and white) to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood. At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags") and Black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of Black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks. By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. The Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership even at its height. Local Klan members, often wearing masks and dressed in the organization's signature long white robes and hoods, usually carried out their attacks at night. They acted on their own but supported the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where Black people were a minority or a slight majority of the population and were relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871, 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight Black prisoners. Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern white people, the organization's membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians, and ministers. In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to act against it. Even those who arrested Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them. 

 

Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group's actions, giving them implicit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

 

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. In addition, the act authorized the president to suspend the habeas corpus, arrest accused individuals without charge, and send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. For those of us dummies that may not know, a "writ of habeas corpus" (which literally means to "produce the body") is a court order demanding that a public official (such as a warden) deliver an imprisoned individual to the court and show a valid reason for that person's detention. The procedure provides a means for prison inmates or others acting on their behalf to dispute the legal basis for confinement.

 

This expansion of federal authority–which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South–outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

 

Now, this was just the first version of the Klan. A second version started up in the early 1900s and later on another revival which is the current iteration of the Klan. We're not going to go into the later versions of the Klan because well…. Fuck 'em! We've already given them too much air time! But… This most definitely qualifies as a Christmas disaster.

 

Next up, we have a couple natural disasters. 

 

First up, Cyclone Tracy. Cyclone Tracy has been described as the most significant tropical cyclone in Australia's history, and it changed how we viewed the threat of tropical cyclones to northern Australia.

 

Five days before Christmas 1974, satellite images showed a tropical depression in the Arafura Sea, 700 kilometers (or almost 435 miles for us Americans) northeast of Darwin.

 

The following day the Tropical Cyclone Warning Center in Darwin warned that a cyclone had formed and gave it the name Tracy. Cyclone Tracy was moving southwest at this stage, but as it passed the northwest of Bathurst Island on December 23, it slowed down and changed course.

 

That night, it rounded Cape Fourcroy and began moving southeast, with Darwin directly in its path.

 

The first warning that Darwin was under threat came at 12:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve when a top-priority flash cyclone warning was issued advising people that Cyclone Tracy was expected to make landfall early Christmas morning.

 

Despite 12 hours' warning of the cyclone's impending arrival, it fell mainly on deaf ears.

 

Residents were complacent after a near-miss from Cyclone Selma a few weeks before and distracted by the festive season.

 

Indeed in the preceding decade, the Bureau of Meteorology had identified 25 cyclones in Northern Territory waters, but few had caused much damage. Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy was a small but intense system at landfall.

 

The radius of the galeforce winds extended only 50 kilometers from the eye of the cyclone, making it one of the most miniature tropical cyclones on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 

Records show that at least six tropical cyclones had severely impacted Darwin before Tracy.

 

The worst of these was in January 1897 when a "disastrous hurricane" nearly destroyed the settlement, and 28 people died.

 

However, unlike Tracy, it is thought this cyclone did not directly pass over Darwin.

 

And while Tracy was reported as a category four cyclone, some meteorologists today believe it may have been a category five shortly before it made landfall.

 

At midnight on Christmas Day, wind gusts greater than 100 kilometers or over 62 miles per hour began to be recorded.

 

The cyclone's center reached East Point at 3:15 a.m. and landed just north of Fannie Bay at 3:30 a.m.

 

Tracy was so strong it bent a railway signal tower in half. 

 

The city was devastated by the cyclone. At least 90 percent of homes in Darwin were demolished or badly damaged. Forty-five vessels in the harbor were wrecked or damaged.

 

In addition to the 65 people who died, 145 were admitted to the hospital with serious injuries.

 

Vegetation was damaged up to 80 kilometers away from the coast, and Darwin felt eerily quiet due to the lack of insect and birdlife.

 

Within a week after the cyclone hit, more than 30,000 Darwin residents had been evacuated by air or road. That's more than two-thirds of the population at that time.

 

Cyclone Tracy remains one of Australia's most significant disasters.

 

As Murphy wrote 10 years after the cyclone: "The impact of Cyclone Tracy has reached far beyond the limits of Darwin itself. All along the tropical coasts of northern Australia and beyond a new cyclone awareness has emerged."

 

Merry fucking Christmas! Damn, that sucks. The information in this section came from an article on abc.net.au

 

Next up, we are going way back. The Christmas Flood of 1717 resulted from a northwesterly storm, which hit the coastal area of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia on Christmas night of 1717. During the night of Christmas, 1717, the coastal regions of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia were hit by a severe north-western storm. It is estimated that 14,000 people died. It was the worst flood for four centuries and the last significant flood to hit the north of the Netherlands.

 

In the countryside to the north of the Netherlands, the water level rose up to a few meters. The city of Groningen rose up to a few feet. In the province of Groningen, villages that were situated directly behind the dikes were nearly swept away. Action had to be taken against looters who robbed houses and farms under the fraudulent act of rescuing the flood victims. In total, the flood caused 2,276 casualties in Groningen. 1,455 homes were either destroyed or suffered extensive damage. Most livestock was lost.

 

The water also poured into Amsterdam and Haarlem and the areas around Dokkum and Stavoren. Over 150 people died in Friesland alone. In addition, large sections of Northern Holland were left underwater and the area around Zwolle and Kampen. In these areas, the flood only caused material damage. In Vlieland, however, the sea poured over the dunes, almost entirely sweeping away the already-damaged village of West-Vlieland.

 

We also found this report from a German website. It's been translated, so our apologies if it's wonky. 

 

"According to tradition, several days before Christmas, it had blown strong and sustained from the southwest. Shortly after sunset on Christmas Eve, the wind suddenly turned from west to northwest and eased a little. The majority of the residents went to bed unconcerned, because currently was half moon and the next regular flood would not occur until 7 a.m. At the time when the tide was supposed to have been low for a long time, however, a drop in the water level could not be determined.

Allegedly between 1 and 2 a.m. the storm began to revive violently accompanied by lightning and thunder. Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning the water reached the top of the dike. The current and waves caused the dike caps to break, so that the tide rolled over the dike into the flat land with a loud roar of thunder. Many only had time to save themselves in the dark on the floor under the roof. Most of the time there was not even time to take clothes, drinking water and some food with you. Numerous houses could not withstand the rising water and the current. In the higher and higher water and the increasing current, windows were Doors and entire walls dented. Allegedly the hurricane and the storm surge raged against the coast for three full days, so that it was not until December 28 that the water fell so far that one could come to the aid of one's neighbors with simply built "boats."

In many places, the dykes had been razed to the ground, which meant that in lower-lying areas, every regular flood caused renewed flooding. At the places where the dykes were broken, deep valleys, some of which were large, formed. In many places where the dike is led around in a semi-arch, these walls, also known as pools or bracken, are still visible and testify to the force of the water. At that time, many people are said to have believed that the march was forever lost. In the low-lying areas, the water was later covered with ice floes, sometimes held up for months. Up until the summer months, bodies were said to have been found repeatedly during the clean-up work on the alluvial piles of straw and in the trenches. Many people who survived the flood later fell victim to so-called marching fever. New storm surges in the following years ruined the efforts for the first time to get the dike back into a defensible condition, and many houses, which were initially only damaged, have now been completely destroyed. Numerous small owners left the country so that the Hanover government even issued a ban on emigration."

 

Looks like the Netherlands got a proper Christmas fucking as well! Some towns were so severely destroyed that nothing was left, and they simply ceased to exist. Damn. 

 

Cyclones and floods… What else does mother nature have for us? Well, how's about an earthquake! On Friday, December 26, 2003, at 5:26 a.m., Bam city in Southeastern Iran was jolted by an earthquake registering a 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale. This was the result of the strike-slip motion of the Bam fault, which runs through this area. The earthquake's epicenter was determined to be approximately six miles southwest of the city. Three more significant aftershocks and many smaller aftershocks were also recorded, the last of which occurred over a month after the main earthquake. To date, official death tolls have 26,271 fatalities, 9000 injured, and 525 still missing. The city of Bam is one of Iran's most ancient cities, dating back to 224A.D. Latest reports and damage estimates are approaching the area of $1.9 billion. A United Nations report estimated that about 90% of the city's buildings were 60%-100% damaged, while the remaining buildings were between 30%-60% damaged. The crazy part about the whole thing… The quake only lasted for about 8 seconds.

 

Now I know what you're thinking… That's not Christmas… Well, there spanky, the night of the 25th, Christmas, people started to feel minor tremors that would preface the quake, so fuck you, it counts.

 

We have one more natural disaster for you guys, and this one most of you guys probably remember. And this one was another that started last Christmas night and rolled into the 26th, also known as boxing day. So we're talking about the Boxing Day Tsunami and the Indian ocean earthquake in 2004. 

 

A 9.1-magnitude earthquake—one of the largest ever recorded—ripped through an undersea fault in the Indian Ocean, propelling a massive column of water toward unsuspecting shores. The Boxing Day tsunami would be the deadliest in recorded history, taking a staggering 230,000 lives in a matter of hours.

 

The city of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra was closest to the powerful earthquake's epicenter, and the first waves arrived in just 20 minutes. It's nearly impossible to imagine the 100-foot roiling mountain of water that engulfed the coastal city of 320,000, instantly killing more than 100,000 men, women, and children. Buildings folded like houses of cards, trees, and cars were swept up in the oil-black rapids, and virtually no one caught in the deluge survived.

 

Thailand was next. With waves traveling 500 mph across the Indian Ocean, the tsunami hit the coastal provinces of Phang Nga and Phuket an hour and a half later. Despite the time-lapse, locals and tourists were utterly unaware of the imminent destruction. Curious beachgoers even wandered out among the oddly receding waves, only to be chased down by a churning wall of water. The death toll in Thailand was nearly 5,400, including 2,000 foreign tourists.

 

An hour later, on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean, the waves struck the southeastern coast of India near the city of Chennai, pushing debris-choked water kilometers inland and killing more than 10,000 people, primarily women and children, since many of the men were out fishing. But some of the worst devastations were reserved for the island nation of Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people were swept away by the waves and hundreds of thousands left homeless.

 

As proof of the record-breaking strength of the tsunami, the last victims of the Boxing Day disaster perished nearly eight hours later when swelling seas and rogue waves caught swimmers by surprise in South Africa, 5,000 miles from the quake's epicenter.

 

Vasily Titov is a tsunami researcher and forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research. He credits the unsparing destructiveness of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on the raw power of the earthquake that spawned it. The quake originated in a so-called megathrust fault, where heavy oceanic plates subduct beneath lighter continental plates. 

 

"They are the largest faults in the world and they're all underwater," says Titov.

 

The 2004 quake ruptured a 900-mile stretch along the Indian and Australian plates 31 miles below the ocean floor. Rather than delivering one violent jolt, the earthquake lasted an unrelenting 10 minutes, releasing as much pent-up power as several thousand atomic bombs.

 

In the process, massive segments of the ocean floor were forced an estimated 30 or 40 meters (up to 130 feet) upward. The effect was like dropping the world's most giant pebble in the Indian Ocean with ripples the size of mountains extending out in all directions.

 

Titov emphasizes that tsunamis look nothing like the giant surfing break-style waves that many imagine.

 

"It's a wave, but from the observer's standpoint, you wouldn't recognize it as a wave," Titov says. "It's more like the ocean turns into a white water river and floods everything in its path."

 

Once caught in the raging waters, the debris will finish the job if the currents don't pull you under.

 

"In earthquakes, a certain number of people die but many more are injured. It's completely reversed with tsunamis," says Titov. "Almost no injuries, because it's such a difficult disaster to survive."

 

Holy fuck…

That's insane!

 

Well, there are some crazy natural disasters gifted to us by mother nature. So now let's take a look at some man-made disasters… And there are some bad ones. 

 

First up is the 1953 train wreck on Christmas Eve in New Zealand. So this is actually a mix of mother nature fucking people and a man-made structure failing. This event is also referred to as the Tangiwai disaster. The weather on Christmas Eve was fine, and with little recent rain, no one suspected flooding in the Whangaehu River. The river appeared normal when a goods train crossed the bridge around 7 p.m. What transformed the situation was the sudden release of approximately 2 million cubic meters of water from the crater lake of nearby Mt Ruapehu. A 6-meter-high wave containing water, ice, mud, and rocks surged, tsunami-like, down the Whangaehu River. Sometime between 10.10 and 10.15 p.m., this lahar struck the concrete pylons of the Tangiwai railway bridge.

 

Traveling at approximately 65 km per hour, locomotive Ka 949 and its train of nine carriages and two vans reached the severely weakened bridge at 10.21 p.m. As the bridge buckled beneath its weight, the engine plunged into the river, taking all five second-class carriages with it. The torrent force destroyed four of these carriages – those inside had little chance of survival.

 

The leading first-class carriage, Car Z, teetered on the edge of the ruined bridge for a few minutes before breaking free from the remaining three carriages and toppling into the river. It rolled downstream before coming to rest on a bank as the water level fell. Remarkably, 21 of the 22 passengers in this carriage survived. Evidence suggested that the locomotive driver, Charles Parker, had applied the emergency brakes some 200 m from the bridge, which prevented the last three carriages from ending up in the river and saved many lives. Even still, 151 of the 285 passengers and crew died that night in the crash.

 

This information was taken from nzhistory.gov. 

 

Next up is the Italian Hall disaster. 

 

Before it was called Calumet, the area was known as Red Jacket. And for many, it seemed to be ground zero for the sprawling copper mining operations that absorbed wave after wave of immigrants into the Upper Peninsula.

 

Red Jacket itself was a company town for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, a large firm that in the 1870s was known as the world's largest copper producer. For a time, C&H had the world's deepest copper mines.

 

But the company wasn't immune from the organized labor push that swept across the Keweenaw Peninsula and other parts of the U.P. in 1913. Miners in Montana and Colorado had unionized, and in July of that year, the Western Federation of Miners called a strike against all Copper Country mines. According to a mining journal published that year, they were pushing for a $3 daily wage, 8-hour days, safer working conditions, and representation.

 

"The strike took place in a very complicated time in American history," said Jo Holt, a historian with the National Park Service's Keweenaw National Historical Park. "We had all these different things coming together. An increasingly industrialized country was grappling with worker's rights, gender issues, and immigration. We were moving from a gilded age into a progressive era, and recognizing the voice of labor.

 

"We see this event happen in the midst of that struggle."

 

"The reason it resonates today is we are still having these conversations. How do we create a just economy that functions for everybody? ... We are still, almost hundred and 10 years later, in the midst of these conversations."

 

As the strike wore into fall and the holiday season, a women's auxiliary group to the WFM organized a Christmas Eve party for the miners' families at the Italian Benevolent Society building, better known as the Italian Hall.

 

It was a big, boisterous affair, researchers have said. The multi-story hall was packed, with more than 600 people inside at one point. Children were watching a play and receiving gifts. Organizers later said the crowd was so large that it was hard to track who was coming in the door.

 

When the false cry of "Fire!" went up, pandemonium reached the sole stairway leading down to the street.

 

"What happened is when people panicked, they tried to get out through the stairwell," Holt said. "Someone tripped or people started to fall, and that's what created the bottleneck. It was just people falling on top of each other."

 

The aftermath was horrifying. As the dead were pulled from the pile in the stairwell, the bodies were carried to the town hall, which turned into a makeshift morgue. Some families lost more than one child. Other children were orphaned when their parents died.

 

One black and white photo in the Michigan Technological University Archives shows rows of what looks like sleeping children lying side-by-side. Their eyes are closed. Their faces were unmarred. The caption reads: "Christmas Eve in the Morgue."

 

After the dead were buried, some families moved away. Others stayed and kept supporting the strike, which ended the following spring.

 

Rumors emerged later that the Italian Hall's doors were designed to open inward, preventing the panicked crowd from pushing them outward to the street. Those were debunked, along with the suggestion in Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" song that mining company thugs were holding the doors shut from the outside that night.

 

Damn… Mostly kids. On Christmas. That's a tough one.

 

Here's another touchy one. A race riot erupted in Mayfield, Kentucky, just before Christmas 1896.

Although slavery in the U.S. ended after the Civil War, the Reconstruction period and beyond was a dangerous time to be black. Things were awful for non-whites in the former Confederacy, amongst which Kentucky was especially bad for racial violence. In December 1896, white vigilantes lynched two black men within 24 hours of each other between the 21st and 22nd, one for a minor disagreement with a white man and the other, Jim Stone, for alleged rape. A note attached to Stone's swinging corpse warned black residents to get out of town.

 

In response to this unambiguous threat, the local African-American population armed themselves. Rumors spread amongst the town's white people that 250 men were marching on the city, and a state of emergency was called. The whites mobilized, black stores were vandalized, and fighting broke out between the two sides on December 23. In the event, three people were killed, including Will Suet, a black teenager who had just got off the train to spend Christmas with his family. It was all over on Christmas Eve, and a few days later, an uneasy truce between the races was called.

 

Ugh!

Y'all know what time it is? That's right, it's time for some quick hitters.

 

Many of us enjoy the Christmas period by going to the theatre or watching a movie. In December 1903, Chicago residents were eager to do just that at the brand-new Iroquois Theatre, which had been officially opened only in October that year. 1700 people in all crammed themselves in to see the zany, family-friendly musical comedy, Mr. Bluebeard. But just as the wait was over and the show started, a single spark from a stage light lit the surrounding drapery. The show's star, Eddie Foy, tried to keep things together as Iroquois employees struggled to put the curtains out in vain.

 

However, even the spectacle of a Windy City-native in drag couldn't stop the terrified crowd stampeding for the few exits. These, preposterously, were concealed by curtains and utterly inadequate in number. When the actors opened their own exit door to escape, a gust of wind sent a fireball through the crowded theatre, meaning that hundreds died before the fire service was even called. 585 people died, either suffocated, burned alive, or crushed. The scene was described in a 1904 account as "worse than that pictured in the mind of Dante in his vision of the inferno".

Next up, the politics behind this ghastly event are pretty complicated – one Mexican lecturer described the massacre as "the most complicated case in Mexico" – but here's an inadequate summary. The small and impoverished village of Acteal, Mexico, was home to Las Abejas (the bees'), a religious collective that sympathized with a rebel group opposing the Mexican government. Thus, on December 22, 1997, members of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party crept down the steep hill slopes above the village. They chose their moment to attack carefully as people gathered at a prayer meeting when they finally slunk into Acteal.

 

Over the next few hours, assassins armed with guns executed 45 innocent people in cold blood. Amongst the dead were 21 women, some of whom were pregnant, and 15 children. Worst of all, investigations into this cowardly act seem to implicate the government itself. Soldiers garrisoned nearby did not intervene, despite being within earshot of the gunfire and horrified screams. In addition, there was evidence of the crime scene being tampered with by local police and government officials. Though some people have been convicted, there are suspicions that they were framed and that the real culprits remain at large.

 

-Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except the Soviet Union. The Marxist-Leninist Khalq and Parcham parties had ousted the Afghan president in April 1978. Still, communism was so unpopular in Afghanistan that the mujahideen succeeded in toppling them just over a year later. So Khalq and Parcham turned to the Soviet Union for help, and on Christmas Eve that year, they obliged by sending 30,000 troops across the border into Afghanistan by the cover of darkness. Bloody fighting ensued, and soon the Soviet Union had control of the major cities.

 

The Soviets stayed for nine years, at which time the mujahideen, backed by foreign support and weapons, waged a brutal guerrilla campaign against the invaders. In turn, captured mujahideen were executed, and entire villages and agricultural areas were razed to the ground. When the Soviets finally withdrew in February 1989, over 1 million civilians and almost 125,000 soldiers from both sides were killed. From the turmoil after the Afghan-Soviet War emerged, the Taliban, installed by neighboring Pakistan, and with them Osama bin Laden. This indeed was a black Christmas for the world.

 

-How about another race riot… No? Well, here you go anyway. Although, this one may be more fucked up. The Agana Race Riot saw black and white US Marines fight it out from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, 1944.

Guam was host to both black and white US Marines in 1944. But instead of fighting the enemy, the white troops elected to turn on the all-black Marine 25th Depot Company. First, the white Marines would stop their fellow soldiers from entering Agana, pelt them with rocks, and shout racist obscenities at them. Then, on Christmas Eve 1944, 9 members of the 25th on official leave were seen talking to local women, and white Marines opened fire on them. Then, on Christmas Day, 2 black soldiers were shot dead by drunken white Marines in separate incidents.

 

Guam's white Marines were decidedly short on festive cheer and goodwill to all men. Not content with these murders, a white mob attacked an African-American depot on Boxing Day, and a white soldier sustained an injury when the 25th returned fire. Sick of their treatment by their fellow soldiers, 40 black Marines gave chase to the retreating mob in a jeep, but further violence was prevented by a roadblock. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, the black soldiers were charged with unlawful assembly, rioting, and attempted murder, while the white soldiers were left to nurse their aching heads.

 

One more major one for you guys, and then we'll leave on a kind of happier note. This one's kind of rough. Be warned. 

 

In late December 2008 and into January 2009, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) brutally killed more than 865 civilians and abducted at least 160 children in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). LRA combatants hacked their victims to death with machetes or axes or crushed their skulls with clubs and heavy sticks. In some of the places where they attacked, few were left alive.

 

The worst attacks happened 48 hours over Christmas in locations some 160 miles apart in the Daruma, Duru, and Faradje areas of the Haut-Uele district of northern Congo. The LRA waited until the time of Christmas festivities on December 24 and 25 to carry out their devastating attacks, apparently choosing a moment when they would find the maximum number of people altogether. The killings occurred in the Congo and parts of southern Sudan, where similar weapons and tactics were used.

 

The Christmas massacres in Congo are part of a longstanding practice of horrific atrocities and abuse by the LRA. Before shifting its operations to the Congo in 2006, the LRA was based in Uganda and southern Sudan, where LRA combatants also killed, raped, and abducted thousands of civilians. When the LRA moved to Congo, its combatants initially refrained from targeting Congolese people. Still, in September 2008, the LRA began its first wave of attacks, apparently to punish local communities who had helped LRA defectors to escape. The first wave of attacks in September, together with the Christmas massacres, has led to the deaths of over 1,033 civilians and the abduction of at least 476 children.

 

LRA killings have not stopped since the Christmas massacres. Human Rights Watch receives regular reports of murders and abductions by the LRA, keeping civilians living in terror. According to the United Nations, over 140,000 people have fled their homes since late December 2008 to seek safety elsewhere. New attacks and the flight of civilians are reported weekly. People are frightened to gather together in some areas, believing that the LRA may choose these moments to strike, as they did with such devastating efficiency over Christmas.

 

Even by LRA standards, the Christmas massacres in the Congo were ruthless. LRA combatants struck quickly and quietly, surrounding their victims as they ate their Christmas meal in Batande village or gathered for a Christmas day concert in Faradje. In Mabando village, the LRA sought to maximize the death toll by luring their victims to a central place, playing the radio, and forcing their victims to sing songs and call for others to come to join the party. In most attacks, they tied up their victims, stripped them of their clothes, raped the women and girls, and then killed their victims by crushing their skulls. In two cases, the attackers tried to kill three-year-old toddlers by twisting off their heads. The few villagers who survived often did so because their assailants thought they were dead.

 

Yeah...so there's that. We could go much deeper into this incident, but we think you get the point. 

 

We'll leave you with a story that is pretty bizarre when you stop and think about it. But we'll leave you with this story of an unlikely Christmas get-together. This is the story of the Christmas truce. 

 

British machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfather, later a prominent cartoonist, wrote about it in his memoirs. Like most of his fellow infantrymen of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he was spending the holiday eve shivering in the muck, trying to keep warm. He had spent a good part of the past few months fighting the Germans. And now, in a part of Belgium called Bois de Ploegsteert, he was crouched in a trench that stretched just three feet deep by three feet wide, his days and nights marked by an endless cycle of sleeplessness and fear, stale biscuits and cigarettes too wet to light.

 

"Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity," Bairnsfather wrote, "…miles and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud." There didn't "seem the slightest chance of leaving—except in an ambulance."

 

At about 10 p.m., Bairnsfather noticed a noise. "I listened," he recalled. "Away across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices." He turned to a fellow soldier in his trench and said, "Do you hear the Boches [Germans] kicking up that racket over there?"

 

Yes," came the reply. "They've been at it some time!"

 

The Germans were singing carols, as it was Christmas Eve. In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back. "Suddenly," Bairnsfather recalled, "we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again." The voice was from an enemy soldier, speaking in English with a strong German accent. He was saying, "Come over here."

 

One of the British sergeants answered: "You come half-way. I come half-way."

 

In the years to come, what happened next would stun the world and make history. Enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches and meet in the barbed-wire-filled "No Man's Land" that separated the armies. Typically, the British and Germans communicated across No Man's Land with streaking bullets, with only occasional gentlemanly allowances to collect the dead unmolested. But now, there were handshakes and words of kindness. The soldiers traded songs, tobacco, and wine, joining in a spontaneous holiday party in the cold night.

Bairnsfather could not believe his eyes. "Here they were—the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. There was not an atom of hate on either side."

 

And it wasn't confined to that one battlefield. Starting on Christmas Eve, small pockets of French, German, Belgian, and British troops held impromptu cease-fires across the Western Front, with reports of some on the Eastern Front as well. Some accounts suggest a few of these unofficial truces remained in effect for days.

 

Descriptions of the Christmas Truce appear in numerous diaries and letters of the time. One British soldier, a rifleman, named J. Reading, wrote a letter home to his wife describing his holiday experience in 1914: "My company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas eve, and it was my turn…to go into a ruined house and remain there until 6:30 on Christmas morning. During the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English. They shouted out: 'Are you the Rifle Brigade; have you a spare bottle; if so we will come halfway and you come the other half.'"

 

"Later on in the day they came towards us," Reading described. "And our chaps went out to meet them…I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire that day, and everything was so quiet it seemed like a dream."

 

Another British soldier, named John Ferguson, recalled it this way: "Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!"

 

Other diaries and letters describe German soldiers using candles to light Christmas trees around their trenches. One German infantryman described how a British soldier set up a makeshift barbershop, charging Germans a few cigarettes each for a haircut. Other accounts describe vivid scenes of men helping enemy soldiers collect their dead, of which there was plenty.

 

One British fighter named Ernie Williams later described in an interview his recollection of some makeshift soccer play on what turned out to be an icy pitch: "The ball appeared from somewhere, I don't know where... They made up some goals and one fellow went in goal and then it was just a general kick-about. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part."

 

German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134 Saxons Infantry, a schoolteacher who spoke both English and German, described a pick-up soccer game in his diary, which was discovered in an attic near Leipzig in 1999, written in an archaic German form of shorthand. "Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon, a lively game ensued," he wrote. "How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time."

 

So much more can be said about this event, but that seems like an excellent place to leave off this Christmas episode! And yes, when you really do stop and think about it… That's a pretty crazy yet fantastic thing.

 

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