Setting it around one of the most famous instances of a "spontaneous truce" on the battlefield grabbed me, as it's interesting to imagine how exactly the these men transitioned back to killing each other on the days following that Christmas soccer match. The act of violence in the game, and the wary resumption of play after it added a nice bit of foreboding. And while using a dog for sympathy is recognizable as manipulation, damn if it doesn't work on me every time, so why not use it in a short story format to get the job done? I was probably most invested in those tales of past acts and fathers.

If I were to lay a criticism on the work, I would say that the efforts to portray the base idea that "war is hell" tend to be a bit over the top themselves. Rather than easing us into a darkly poetic description of things, we are dropped into the middle of a very dense, very dark collection of similes and metaphors that push the opening towards melodrama. For all their darkness, there are definitely some turns of phrase that are quite inventive and well done... Minimizing the weaker or simply less important ones in favor of more straightforward prose will give the stronger ones more impact, in my opinion. Likewise, the unrelenting horror of the landscape evens out the tone too much. Even while they're are celebrating their Christmas truce there are regular references to the bodies of the dead. Picking the moments to reemphasize that this is a battlefield would give the juxtaposition more power, I think.

Oh, and on a minor note, the fact that the main character remained unnamed stood out a bit too much with the scene where the commanding officer didn't call him by whatever it was. It almost becomes a little in-joke, like never getting to see Norm's wife Vera on "Cheers"... Nothing major, but it pulled me out of things momentarily.

The more hopeless tone of the second half worked well in portraying the sense that peace was fading away and had no chance of returning, while the desire to continue the fight had long since ended. I liked the ending, where the father could relate to the son now that they shared the same hollow lie of battlefield honor.

There's some strong work here. I don't know that you'll get much feedback on this board, since there are only a handful of posters and it's a significant investment of time to read and review a work like this. Most people here like things shorter and featuring cameoes by their own characters. (All in all, I'm glad Visionary wasn't stuck in the trenches... and he's pretty bad at soccer anyway.) Nice work though!