The World War I trenches were filthy, unfit for humans, crawling with lice and rats. The men slept standing up to avoid the oozing mud. British, French and Belgian soldiers were separated from their enemy – the German soldiers – by the so-called “No Man’s Land.”

But soldiers on both sides of the war were spending Christmas 1914 in hell.

Something happened between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day to ease that hell. Up and down the Western front in Europe, warring troops observed truces.

“The truce bubbled up from the ranks. Though it was to become so widespread as to impact much of the front, no one was ever certain where and how it had begun,” writes historian Stanley Weintraub in “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.”

Much mythology has arisen concerning the Christmas Truce of 1914, but historians have evidence – from newspaper accounts and letters written by the soldiers who experienced it – that warring troops sang carols back and forth to one another. They exchanged cigarettes and small gifts. They allowed one another to bury their dead. They might or might not have played soccer games against one another.

Christmas Truce 1914 stories are circulating on the Internet now, and the timing is not surprising. This is the third Christmas that U.S. men and women are fighting in Iraq. The physical hell there varies only in the details, compared with 1914. Troops in Iraq e-mail home descriptions of Iraq’s extreme heat in the summer and biting cold in winter, year-round sandstorms and the relentless smoke from bombing sites and burning vehicles.

There is no talk of Christmas Truce 2006, because it would be impossible. And the reasons why illustrate the difference between this “modern” war and World War I. Back then, the warring soldiers shared a common tradition, Christmas, celebrated in different languages. This tradition stemmed from a Christian religious belief, but even those who weren’t religious knew it as the time of year when ordinary life was suspended in order to celebrate with family, food and presents.

In Iraq, a Muslim country, Christmas is a holiday that belongs to another faith tradition, other cultures.

In 1914 there were defined battlefields and trenches were built on either side of them. In Iraq the front is everywhere. It can be found in homemade bombs disguised beneath garbage piled along the road, in homes where insurgents take cover and in explosives hidden beneath the robes of suicide bombers.

What has remained unchanged in 92 years are the emotions of young people far away from home in wartime. The soldiers in 1914 missed loved ones, warm fires, holiday food and the Christmas traditions they had observed since childhood.

In Iraq this Christmas season – despite special Christmas dinners and visits by dignitaries and entertainers – our troops share across history the same longing to be somewhere else, to be home.

There will be no truce this holiday. There is no peace on Earth. These are the sad and inescapable realities of Christmas in wartime, 2006.