The Crucified Soldier refers to the widespread story of an Allied soldier serving in the Canadian Corps who may have been crucified with bayonets on a barn door or a tree, while fighting on the Western Front during World War I. Three witnesses said they saw an unidentified crucified Canadian soldier near the battlefield of Ypres, Belgium on or around 24 April 1915, but there was no conclusive proof such a crucifixion actually occurred. The eyewitness accounts were somewhat contradictory, no crucified body was found, and no knowledge was uncovered at the time about the identity of the supposedly crucified soldier. During World War II the story was used by the Nazis as an example of British propaganda.
Read more about The Crucified Soldier: The Story, Derwent Wood Sculpture, Sergeant Harry Band, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words crucified and/or soldier:
“Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!”
—Daniel Defoe (1659–1731)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)