In the fresh light of dawn one hundred years ago today, German and Allied soldiers were dug into their opposing trenches on the Western Front in Belgium and France when they defied their superiors to declare a truce.

In dropping their weapons, they frightened the world’s war makers, providing a glimpse of the power that people without rank and privilege have to determine their own destinies.

It was only the fifth month of what was then known simply as the Great War. Both sides longed for home. The men felt death looming in the trenches where they watched their friends die. The soldiers wielded monstrous weapons: flamethrowers, chlorine and mustard gas, machine guns that could shoot 500 rounds a minute. More than one million lay dead already.