any proof or reports of events similar to this happening in real life?
Because I think in real life, they both would've killed each other.
signature :
...something deep and overwhelming...
In WWII when the Americans got to the Rhine river, one of the units found a German military phone line in a building. The Germans on the line told them to keep their heads down at a certain time because there would be shelling on that side of the river. This turned out to be true.
Then the Americans called the Germans and told them to take cover because of allied shelling. This went on for a few days.
Then one of the American officers wanted to get his picture taken standing by the Rhine. The GI's called the Germans and asked them not to shoot the officer getting his picture taken, and the Germans held their fire.
I'm sure there were many more incidents like this in the war. (Maybe not so much on the eastern front!)
The most famous incident of this sort surely was the Christmas truce in the trenches in 1914, when British and German soldiers left the trenches and met in No-Man's-Land, shook hands, chatted, exchanged names and addresses, gave each other small gifts, even played a football match. Eventually senior officers put a stop to all this, or the war might have ended there and then. Very well depicted in Oh What a Lovely War.
In the german movie Stalingrad there's a scene in which german and sovjet soldiers arrange a truce to sort out their wounded. It happens inside a building where they're sort of stuck in a stand-off. But of course some Hitlerjugend toy boy F's it up and the whole situation goes out of control.
I have no idea if this really happenened but seeing the integrity which that movie was made it could've well been based on individual real-life experiences, in the same way The Big Red One was.
interesting.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.